By Rafiq Vayani
DUBAI: Mashreq, a leading financial institution in the MENA region, and Cashew, a UAE-based fintech platform, are strengthening their collaboration to co-create an embedded lending framework that brings together regulated banking expertise and digital platform innovation.
Leveraging Cashew’s technology infrastructure alongside Mashreq’s regulated lending, credit decisioning, and risk governance capabilities, the framework embeds financing directly at the point of need. Customers can access funding up to AED 150,000 with repayment tenures of up to 48 months, supported by near-instant approvals and transparent terms. This enables higher-value purchases without significant upfront payments, while ensuring merchants receive funds directly with minimal friction.
As buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) adoption continues to grow across the region among both consumers and merchants, large-ticket pay-later financing introduces a new dimension to the fintech landscape. The joint proposition represents the next evolution of the model, extending the same seamless and fully digital experience to higher-value and essential expenses across categories such as automotive services, home improvement, healthcare, education, and everyday lifestyle needs.
Commenting on the collaboration, Fernando Morillo, Group Head of Retail Banking at Mashreq, said: “The future of finance will be defined by how seamlessly financial services integrate into everyday digital experiences. Our collaboration with Cashew reflects our commitment to shaping embedded lending models that combine strong banking foundations with platform agility. By working together, we are positioning ourselves as a regulated lender capable of supporting higher‑value consumer lending within third‑party platforms, while helping to build scalable frameworks that can support the evolving needs of consumers and merchants across the UAE.”
By actively working with Cashew, Mashreq is moving beyond traditional partnership structures toward deeper platform-level collaboration designed to support the evolving needs of digital ecosystems, enabling instant, flexible financing for essential and high-value purchases.
Ammar Afif, Founder and CEO of Cashew, added: “Our partnership with Mashreq provides the institutional backing required to ensure robust risk governance, scalable funding, and the infrastructure necessary to support responsible growth. In a market like the UAE, where financial innovation continues to accelerate and BNPL adoption is growing rapidly, large-ticket pay-later propositions present a natural next step. Having demonstrated strong success across international markets in the US and Europe, this model offers consumers an instant, hassle-free, all-digital experience and creates a strong launch pad for a new category of financing that is far simpler than applying for a traditional personal loan or using an existing credit card facility.”
The collaboration, part of the longstanding relationship between Mashreq and Cashew, marks a more mature phase of bank–fintech engagement in the UAE, reinforcing the role of regulated embedded lending in expanding responsible access to credit and contributing to the continued evolution of the country’s digital financial ecosystem.
