Abdullah Almoaiqel, Rain | AWSPS Summit Bahrain 2019
Channel: SiliconANGLE theCUBE
Date: 15/09/2019

Abdullah Almoaiqel, Co founder and Partner, Rain, sits down with John Furrier at AWS Public Sector Summit Bahrain 2019 in Manama, Bahrain.

#AWSPSSummit #RAIN #theCUBE

https://siliconangle.com/2019/10/08/bahrains-young-tech-hub-channels-silicon-valley-spirit-adds-gov-backed-flavor-awssummitbahrain-startupoftheweek/

Regulators and innovators make friends for fintech

FinTech is one area where Bahrain is not playing catch up. The country is an established financial center in the Middle, and Central Bank of Bahrain already had a fintech unit in 2017, ahead of other banks around the globe, Abdullah Almoaiqel, co-founder and partner at Rain Management WLL, told theCUBE.

The CBB helped Almoaiqel and his colleagues hone Rain — a startup aimed at transferring cryptocurrency profits to banks cheaply and compliantly. “We joined the Bahrain Central Bank’s regulatory sandbox, which allowed us to experiment and test whether we can do this in a safe and secure way,” he explained.

CBB’s sandbox program is designed to speed innovative technologies through the regulatory checkpoints that often stall them.

“A sandbox is really a controlled, live-bound, time-bound environment enabling startups, as well as existing financial institutions, to test out their innovative solutions under the strict supervision of the regulator — without being required to abide by full regulatory requirements — directly with volunteer customers,” Yasmeen Al-Sharaf, head of the fintech and innovation unit at CBB, told theCUBE.

The sandbox has hosted 35 companies since 2017; Rain is one of two that have graduated. CBB has since drafted regulations for crypto-asset exchanges and brokerages, allowing Rain and others to innovate and operate under clear guidelines. Rain has many retail customers and expects to add more institutions in the future.

The AWS Cloud Region will be a boon to Bahrain’s already lively fintech, Almoaiqel believes. “We see a lot of excitement here from entrepreneurs in the region. Especially with regulation, having customer data stored here in the region, it’s really going to help a lot of entrepreneurs also mitigate any downtime from hosting it in other places,” he concluded. 

Watch the complete video interview with Abdullah Almoaiqel below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS Summit Bahrain event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the AWS Summit Bahrain event. Neither Amazon Web Services Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)