Blaze Meridian Group is a Silver Sponsor of the MEA Finance Leaders in Payments Conference & Awards 2026, taking place on 22 September at The Ritz-Carlton JBR, Dubai.
The conference brings together senior leaders from banks, payment providers, fintechs, regulators and technology businesses across the Middle East and Africa. The 2026 agenda reflects many of the issues currently shaping the payments landscape, from digital defence and resilience to stablecoins, BNPL consolidation, AI across the payments technology stack and cross-border payments innovation.
Malika Beri joins the speaker line-up
Blaze Meridian Founder and Principal Advisor Malika Beri joins the confirmed speaker line-up, bringing 25 years of experience across payments, transaction banking and enterprise go-to-market.
Her career spans J.P. Morgan, Citi, Deutsche Bank and Standard Chartered, with experience across the GCC, India, Asia and Europe and more than 120 mandates across payments, banking technology and commercial growth.
Her participation reflects an area at the heart of Blaze Meridian’s work: helping businesses navigate the increasingly complex intersection between technology, financial services and commercial growth.
Where payments meets execution
Payments is a significant part of Blaze Meridian’s work.
We help technology companies navigate the path into banks and payment institutions – from market strategy and institutional sales through to the complexities of enterprise engagement.
We also work with financial institutions as they evaluate, select and integrate new capabilities, helping programmes maintain commercial momentum while navigating the governance, operational and execution challenges that come with change.
The common thread is execution.
For technology businesses, having the right proposition is only part of the journey. Success depends on understanding how financial institutions buy, how decisions get made and how to navigate the regulatory and operational environment in which those decisions sit.
For banks and payment institutions, innovation brings its own challenge: how to adopt new capabilities without creating unnecessary complexity, operational risk or stalled programmes.
This is the conversation we are looking forward to having at Leaders in Payments 2026.
Meet Blaze Meridian at Leaders in Payments
We look forward to connecting with banks, payment providers, fintechs, technology businesses and other leaders across the payments ecosystem at the event.
If you are attending and would like to meet the Blaze Meridian team, get in touch with us to arrange a meeting