Hubpay: Building the financial backbone of MENA and beyond

Hi friends! 👋

Hubpay began with a simple but urgent problem: remittances.

The Gulf’s migrant workforce sends billions of dollars home each year – yet the infrastructure moving that capital is fragmented, slow, and often extractive.

In 2019, Kevin Kilty spotted an opening: build something akin to TransferWise for the Middle East – streamlined, compliant, and cost-efficient.

But that was only phase one.

As the company expanded, so did its ambition. With licenses secured in both the UAE and Pakistan – making it the first fintech globally to hold both – Hubpay began evolving into something broader: a full-stack platform for emerging market finance.

Today, it offers everything from FX hedging to cross-border payroll, crypto settlement to business IBANs. The company’s thesis today isn’t just to move money – it’s to build the rails it moves on.

In this conversation, Kevin and I unpack the long road to fintech infrastructure in MENA, the overlooked power of remittance corridors, why stablecoins are no longer a sideshow – and what it really means to build a business from the trenches of regulatory complexity.

We close our chat with a reflection on the potential escalation of tariff wars under the current U.S. administration — and Kevin’s insights, shared three weeks ago, now read as remarkably prescient.

Here’s what we covered:

• 💸 Why remittances are still the best wedge for building financially inclusive infrastructure

• 🧱 How EMI licensing and dual-rail corridors (UAE + Pakistan) create a defensible moat

• 💼 Why SME business banking in the Gulf is a generational opportunity – and still mostly unsolved

• 🔗 How stablecoin liquidity and cross-border trade are driving real-world demand in crypto

• 📈 Why profitability—not growth at all costs – is HubPay’s focus ahead of its Series B

• 📊 Why UAE fintech is at a genuine inflection point – and what it’ll take to get to IPO

Let’s get into it 👇

Supported by Hubpay

UAE businesses often face lengthy onboarding processes, minimum balance requirements, and slow payment systems that hinder their growth.

Hubpay simplifies your financial journey with transparent pricing, fully digital onboarding, and seamless global payments.

Whether you're a startup, growing business, or large enterprise, Hubpay offers a tailored solution to help you scale faster and smarter.

Visit their website today to find the perfect account solution for your business.

Actionable insights 🧠 🛠️

If you only have a few minutes to spare, here’s what investors, operators, and founders should take away from HubPay’s story – and what it reveals about building infrastructure-led fintech in emerging markets.

• Financial inclusion won’t scale through subsidies. HubPay didn’t try to subsidise inclusion through free products. Instead, it built a profitable wedge: cross-border remittances. This isn’t just a revenue stream – it’s a high-frequency, high-value use case that naturally anchors financial identity. With remittances, users are already performing a “core financial act.” Building adjacent services (savings, wallets, insurance) becomes easier once you’re the trusted conduit. Inclusion without a monetisable anchor is just a mission statement.

• EMI licensing + bilateral infrastructure = strategic defensibility. Most fintechs still treat licenses as a regulatory checkbox. Hubpay sees them as core infrastructure – and a durable moat. Holding EMI licenses in both the UAE and Pakistan (the only company to do so) isn’t a compliance win – it’s a market access weapon. These dual rails unlock interoperability, new user segments, and frictionless capital movement – especially when local bank penetration is low and FX corridors are broken.

• SME payroll is where consumer fintech was in 2013. Cross-border payroll for startups and SMEs in MENA is where neobanks like Monzo or Revolut found B2C wedge success: ignored, painful, and ripe for reinvention. HubPay’s approach – plug-and-play CSV uploads, automated FX conversion, and no-code interfaces – suggests the opportunity isn’t in flashy UX, but workflow-native infrastructure. This is B2B consumerisation, with retention baked into monthly payouts. Operators building for this segment shouldn’t chase features – chase workflows.

• Stablecoin demand in emerging markets isn’t “coming” – it’s already here. The real stablecoin breakthrough isn’t retail speculation – it’s dollar liquidity in trade-heavy, volatile currency markets. HubPay’s integration with AquaNow targets exactly this: cashew traders in Nigeria transacting with buyers in China. USDT now offers liquidity, speed (15-minute settlement), and regulatory cover through AML-enforced partnerships. For founders in crypto infra, this is the new beachhead: replace USD-based correspondent banking in fragmented trade routes with trust-minimised, dollar-pegged rails.

Okay, let’s dig into it 👇

This article is part of FWDstart’s partner programme series. We follow stringent editorial standards, and while we collaborate closely with our partners, final editorial control rests solely with FWDstart to ensure the authenticity and creativity of our content. All partnerships are disclosed clearly, and we only collaborate with organisations we genuinely admire – Hubpay is one of them.

Many fintech founders enter the space thinking they’re going to disrupt traditional banking, only to find themselves building infrastructure that banks already have. When you launched Hubpay in 2019, what did you think you were building, and how has that changed over time?

You've pretty much nailed it.

I came from a banking background, so I had no illusions, at a high level, about how financial architecture worked. I'm not an engineer or a coder, but I did understand how global transaction services functioned and how that whole system fit together.

The value thesis I saw when I came to the UAE – and I was in Dubai pretty much by chance – was that there was this vision here. One of the leaders, Sheikh Maktoum, had said he wanted to make Dubai a modern-day Córdoba. Back in Roman times, Córdoba was this city of enterprise—it brought together people from across North Africa, the Mediterranean, Western Europe... it was a real intersection of cultures and commerce.

That spirit is something Dubai has definitely achieved.

So in Phase One, the opportunity I saw was an obvious gap in the market – something like a TransferWise-style solution: simple, low-cost, efficient, good UX, for both retail and corporate users.

But Phase Two, which I find more interesting, is the broader regional opportunity. The gap here is far more significant than in developed markets like Western Europe.

That’s where you can really build something different – something more evolved. That’s been our focus.

And look, we’ve achieved exactly what we set out to do – it’s just taken way longer. Every founder says that… apart from the lucky few.

You’ve worked in financial inclusion and impact investing in Palestine, Libya, and across MENA. How did that shape your understanding of what’s missing in the financial system, and how does Hubpay aim to fill that gap?

Those kinds of experiences are actually why I ended up in Dubai in the first place.

I moved here without any real plan to stay in the UAE. The idea was to apply for jobs in more frontier markets, ideally doing impact investment. I was specifically looking to specialise in post-conflict investment – hence Libya.

I’d even looked at private equity roles in Myanmar and similar places. Quite niche, quite challenging.

That interest really goes back to my background. We actually share a similar heritage – I was born in Dublin, we emigrated when I was young. I studied history at university, and my dissertation was on the Troubles. I was fascinated by how you can rebuild and develop economies in the aftermath of conflict – and how economic development plays a massive role in peacebuilding.

When people see better opportunities – when they experience what peace and prosperity can actually bring – then peace becomes more valuable. That really stuck with me.

I worked with Opportunity International on the microfinance side, which was incredibly formative. Microfinance has shown itself to be a powerful tool for poverty alleviation, economic growth, and especially social empowerment. If you look at the female empowerment angle in particular – think of the Grameen Bank, founded by Muhammad Yunus, the father of microfinance – there’s a real legacy there that I found inspiring.

Now… have we achieved that goal with HubPay? No, not yet.

We’ve built the foundations of a successful fintech business, and we’re still firmly in the startup phase – we haven’t yet transitioned to scale-up. But we believe that’s on track to happen this year.

The initial goal of driving financial inclusion? That hasn’t been realised – yet. But we still believe it’s achievable, and we’re still actively working toward it.

There are definitely reasons why it hasn’t happened so far, and I’d be happy to get into that.

That would be great – because I think there’s this ongoing debate around financial inclusion versus monetisation.

A lot of founders enter the space with bold ambitions around inclusion, but then inevitably need to shift toward higher-margin, corporate-focused solutions. How has that tension played out at HubPay?

We definitely go through cycles on this – and right now, we’re in a bit of a down cycle when it comes to talking about social impact.

There’s a broader trend around compassionate business or inclusive capitalism. It seesaws. Hopefully, it doesn’t swing too far in either direction.

If you look at financial inclusion in the Western world, there’s not a significant gap left to address. That gap was largely closed in the ’90s.

In Ireland, for example, there was a massive expansion of banking – of course, it went too far into the credit space, thanks in part to institutions like Anglo Irish Bank or, in the UK, my former employer, RBS. But people often forget that a lot of that push stemmed from the Clinton administration in the US, which aimed to increase home ownership through lower-income mortgage access.

It was an altruistic goal. And back in the ’90s, a lot of people still had to go to check-cashing centers just to access their wages – losing a cut in the process. Many didn’t have a proper savings account or access to mortgages. So the spread of banking access actually had a significant, positive impact on economic empowerment and development.

People talk about inequality now – but if you track the last 50 years across Western Europe, poverty levels, education levels, and access to opportunity have improved significantly. It’s been a challenge over the last decade, but we shouldn’t forget the gains.

So no – I don’t think monetisation and financial inclusion are diametrically opposed. They can coexist. The issue isn’t always greed. Sometimes, I think it’s more humorous than malicious.

Take a branch manager who says, “I’m giving this guy a loan – he runs a good business, he’s a solid guy, and he’ll probably pay it back.” That’s fine on an individual level, but across a $400 billion portfolio, that subjectivity becomes a systemic risk. That’s why you need strong risk systems.

Sorry, I’m deviating – but I think that context is important.

In the developing world, the financial inclusion gap is still significant. My view has always been: if you can solve one major pain point, you can use that as a fulcrum to layer on other services.

Look at companies like Alipay in China or Nubank in Brazil. They started with a clear need – basic banking access – and built from there. China’s banking system at the time was closer to what Europe had in the ’70s or ’80s, so Alipay came in with a modern solution and rapidly scaled because they weren’t held back by legacy IT infrastructure.

That was a big inspiration for us.

In the UK, if I’m sending money from London to Dublin, I might use TransferWise to get a good FX rate – but beyond that, I’m not necessarily looking for more services. Banks aren’t that bad there.

But in the Middle East, there’s still a large unbanked population. Many people here are paid on prepaid salary cards – they don’t have access to full bank accounts or broader financial services. That was the immediate pain point we set out to solve.

And that pain point is tightly linked to remittances.

The UN and agencies like the International Organisation for Migration and UNHCR focus heavily on this. Remittances are transformative. The UAE-to-India corridor, for instance, is the largest in the world – $20 billion last year, sent by 2.8 million people.

But the impact is felt by far more – probably 10 to 20 times that number. It’s a huge driver of political, economic, and cultural ties between the UAE and India.

The UAE has created opportunities for people from everywhere – India, Ireland, you name it – to come here, work, and send money home.

And where does that money go? In most cases, it’s male workers here sending funds to female-led households back home. And without speaking ill of us men, those households tend to be more responsible in their financial decision-making – spending on housing, healthcare, and education, rather than, say, pints.

The net gain in terms of economic development and progress on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals is enormous.

That was our starting point: get licensed in the UAE, launch a retail product, and go mass market.

India was the obvious corridor – but then we looked deeper. The second-largest expat population in the UAE is Pakistani – around 1.2 to 1.3 million people.

But Pakistan is very different from India when it comes to financial inclusion. India is a massive success story – over 99.5% account penetration, and fintechs like Paytm and Citrus have revolutionised everything from insurance to healthcare payments.

Pakistan hasn’t reached that point yet – 76% of the population is still unbanked.

So when we send money to India, it lands in a bank account almost every time. But for Pakistan, the funds are still mostly cashed out at remittance centers.

Our vision was: what if we could build a digital wallet in the UAE and another in Pakistan? That would open the door to actually providing financial services on the ground.

That’s why we secured an EMI license in the UAE and an EMI license in Pakistan. In fact, we’re the only company in the world to have both.

There are only five licensed fintechs in Pakistan today, and the market hasn’t taken off yet. There’s still a massive gap – that’s the problem we want to solve.

Of course, there were integration challenges here in the UAE. Honestly, we were too early.

It was like trying to launch in the UK in the early 2000s, before the EU passed PSD2 and enabled a modern financial ecosystem.

But now, the UAE is at that inflection point.

We’ve touched on remittances and wallets – but now you’ve also moved into business accounts, FX solutions, and even crypto payments.

How have you decided what to double down on first – how do you balance refining your core services versus expanding into new verticals? What’s your thinking behind that progression?

We definitely struggled the last few years – mainly because we were too early.

But we’re now at an inflection point.

The one thing we did focus on during that time was building a really strong regulatory foundation. We secured two licenses, which was a big milestone.

We also built out very solid banking relationships. We're now onboarded with tier-one institutions globally, which enables us to offer what I think are the best FX rails in the UAE – for both retail and corporate customers.

This has allowed us to issue account numbers for businesses in the UAE. So now, we’ve got both a retail and a corporate solution.

On top of that, we’ve built our full engineering stack in-house, we’ve got the regulatory licenses, the banking infrastructure, and a strong operational footprint locally.

The UAE is a complex market – there are a lot of free zones, different licensing authorities, and constant evolution. Our team knows how to navigate all of that, and that’s become a real competitive advantage.

With all that in place, we’re finally in a position to build – and build fast.

This quarter has been our biggest in terms of product releases – by some distance.

So where are we focused right now?

The priority is business customers. Specifically, we’re focusing on three tiers:

• Starter

• Scale

• Treasury

Let’s say you, Jamie, were moving to the UAE and wanted to launch a media business here – running interviews, creating content. You’d probably start by incorporating in a free zone. That’s fast here – you can often do that in just a few days.

But then, you’d need a bank account. And that’s where you’d hit a wall. It might take up to three months, and it can be expensive and painful.

In Ireland or the UK, that problem was solved years ago – first by traditional challenger banks, and then made even faster by Monzo and Revolut. But the UAE is still way behind in that regard.

That’s where we come in.

If you’re a small business, you can now apply for a HubPay business account online. You could be approved in as little as 24 hours. You get an IBAN, a named account, you can send and receive domestic and international payments.

We’ve also added payroll, and launched crypto payments.

So business banking is our core focus – and we’ve built the “hub” and the “spokes” around it to offer what we believe is the best business banking solution in the region.

I’m enormously bullish on the stablecoin opportunity – especially when it comes to cross-border payments.

You’ve just announced your partnership with AquaNow which brings crypto payments to UAE businesses. How big is the demand? Are businesses actually looking to transact in stablecoins, or is it still in the early adoption phase?

I’ve been following the space since 2018. When I was writing the business plan for HubPay, I thought, "Right, it’s a new era. If you’re not building with stablecoins, you’ll be left behind – it’s the future of financial architecture."

But honestly? Back then, it was all hype and noise. The infrastructure just wasn’t there.

We spoke to all the major providers at the time – Stellar, Ripple, you name it – and kept in touch with them over the years. But if you're talking about FX like EUR to USD, banks are incredibly fast. Same-day settlement, tight spreads, low cost – because you’ve got massive liquidity. It’s like any commodity: supply and demand dictates the spread.

Then, about six months ago, we started speaking to AquaNow – one of the leading global brokerages in the space.

They’ve got a very sophisticated team, largely ex-bankers from Canada, and they’ve approached the space with a much more disciplined, financial mindset than, say, some of the early “tech bro” crypto outfits. They’re serious about AML, structure, process. Frankly, they’re the adults in the room.

They’ve now built a large team here in Dubai, which I think is another milestone – showing the scale and quality of crypto firms entering the UAE.

And the UAE is well on its way to becoming a leading crypto economy – because the regulation here is actually thoughtful.

So to answer your question: there’s now a real use case for USDT in emerging markets.

Two things have made that possible:

1. Liquidity – There’s finally enough USDT moving through the system to make trading viable and cost-efficient.

2. Stability – It’s pegged to the dollar, so it removes currency risk in volatile markets.

We’ve been speaking to Tether, actually – the growth they’ve seen over the last few years is explosive. USDT has become a strong, usable digital asset for value transfer.

Before, I would’ve said: stablecoins were a solution looking for a problem. But in emerging markets, the problem is now crystal clear.

Take cross-border trade. Let’s say you're trading cashew nuts at the end of the harvest season in Nigeria, and selling them into China.

• Nigeria’s currency, the naira, is volatile.

• The NGN to CNY direct pair is rare and hard to process.

So what happens? You convert naira to USD, then USD to CNY. That adds friction, delays, and multiple spreads. Plus, every institution the payment touches increases the risk of it getting flagged or stuck – for valid AML reasons, but still a challenge.

USDT solves that:

• It’s stable.

• You can settle it in 15 minutes.

• And now, crucially – both parties have the liquidity.

So AquaNow came to us and said, “We think there’s serious demand for this. You’ve got the infrastructure, you’re already live in Pakistan, and we know you’re expanding into more markets. We want a partner in the UAE to bridge fiat and stablecoin payments.”

That kicked things off.

We announced the partnership recently. Integration is complete. We ran the penny tests the other day.

We didn’t even reach out to any customers—people came directly from the press release. They’re saying, “I need a business account – and I want to do USDT payments.”

And it’s not just one niche – it’s real estate, construction, a wide range of industries.

Right now, we’ve got about 25 companies lined up and ready to go live with payments. We’ll start executing properly very soon.

Let’s touch more on FX. We mentioned it earlier, but I think it’s something like over a trillion dollars’ worth of FX transactions annually by UAE-based businesses. You’re now offering FX hedging – something that large corporations have done for years.

And of course, payroll is another area where businesses are exposed to FX volatility.

How does HubPay help SMEs manage cross-border payroll alongside FX risk? And why do you think smaller businesses haven’t adopted these kinds of solutions sooner?

We’re focused right now on the international payroll market.

Say you’re running a media company here in the UAE. You’ve got a couple of people in Ireland, a creative team in the Philippines, maybe some engineers in Pakistan – you’ve got an international team.

Sure, banks can make international payments – but they don’t offer a payroll product.

With HubPay, once you’re onboarded as a business, you just log into your dashboard. There’s a dedicated payroll tab. You upload your CSV file – it auto-populates the data, converts currencies as needed, and sends out the payments automatically.

It’s not rocket science. But for a bank to build that kind of functionality into their legacy systems? That takes time.

In Europe and the US, you now have quite a few companies offering this kind of service. And they’ve done really well – especially in developed markets.

But the real opportunity, I think, is in developing markets – places like the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia – where international teams are common, but the tools just haven’t been built or adopted yet.

And that’s where we’re focused.

I want to ask you about your fundraising journey. I saw that Signal Peak Ventures led both your seed and Series A rounds – and I believe it was their first investment in the GCC at the time. What convinced you to go with them over a regional VC?

I’ll answer the second part first – because it’s easy.

They were the only ones who backed us.

We went through an accelerator here – Startupbootcamp – and we’d applied for a license through the new ADGM regime. We were actually the first startup in the country to get that license.

At the time, I thought we’d be fending off offers. But we didn’t get a single one.

Startupbootcamp connected us to Signal Peak Ventures through their international network. The team at Signal Peak were on the ground, they met me, and they just found it interesting.

They’re based in Salt Lake City – a real hub for the Mormon community, known for its frontier mindset. So I think the idea of an Irish immigrant trying to build a cross-border fintech in the middle of Dubai… maybe they were amused by it as much as they saw it as a genuine opportunity.

But they’ve been hugely supportive.

And when it comes to fundraising – your lead investor is everything.

VCs love to talk a big game about how they lead, how they add value – but the first thing they always ask is, “Who else is in?”

If no one else is in yet, whether they realise it or not, they get nervous. But when a VC like Signal Peak is willing to step up, price the round, do the commercial due diligence – that gives others the confidence to follow. A lot of them are essentially leveraging off that lead investor’s conviction.

It also brings common sense to the cap table. If a startup needs further support down the line – as every startup eventually does – you’ve got multiple VCs who can share the load, rather than one fund shouldering everything.

Signal Peak have been brilliant. Genuinely supportive partners.

Fintech is one of those industries that’s kind of notorious for raising huge rounds – and then struggling with profitability.

You’ve raised a significant amount yourselves. I know you’ve mentioned feeling like you were early in the regional context – but are you prioritising profitability now, or is it still a growth-first strategy?

No – we’re focusing on profitability.

We think we can reach it in Q4 of this year, and we’re on track for that right now. That’s the goal.

There are two main reasons for that.

First, the Middle East is still a thinly invested market. There are very few active VCs here, and it’s kind of a chicken-and-egg situation. The market is smaller in terms of total population and perceived economic opportunity.

And there haven’t been many success stories. There’s really only been one unicorn exit, and one unicorn still going – which is Tabby, on the BNPL side. Beyond that, the ecosystem’s still early. So VCs just haven’t looked at the region in the same way.

We want to remove the pressure that comes with relying on that.

Second, look at the current market trend in fintech. The old model – raise big, burn cash, monetise in 30 years – is finished.

That works if you’re Amazon, which is one in a million. But the other few hundred thousand startups trying that? They’ll fail.

Profitability derisks our entire model.

If we can go into a Series B as a profitable market leader, we’re in a really strong position.

And then, when it comes to future fundraising, we can think more strategically:

• How much equity do we really need?

• How much can we raise through debt instead?

This is a much lower-risk business than many others. We’re doing cross-border payments. You can hedge out most of the FX risk, so you’re left with very little exposure.

We’re not doing lending, we’re not underwriting insurance risk.

That puts us in a strong, stable position to push forward from a place of control.

I think I’ve read pretty much every past interview you’ve done this week, and in one of them, you referenced Elon Musk’s description of building a startup as “chewing glass and staring into the abyss.”

That quote clearly resonated with you to a certain degree—so what’s been your toughest “glass-chewing” moment with HubPay?

Going forward, I might be a little more reticent about quoting Mr. Musk – given his current trend of behaviour.

But it’s still a fair metaphor.

There’s another quote I like, actually – Sam Altman once said that you don’t get burned out from working really hard on a startup. You choose the hard work, and the building part is actually the fun bit.

You get burnt out when it’s not working.

When you’re putting everything into something and there’s no momentum – that’s when it really gets tough.

For us, one of the most painful moments was back in 2022. We’d put huge effort into an integration with a bank so we could offer a state-regulated payroll solution.

The pitch was: “Let us handle your payroll. We’ll provide wallets for all 10,000 of your employees – your blue-collar workforce.”

But it failed. The APIs weren’t there. The engineering team was frustrated – they’d put months into it. The whole company was frustrated.

And then you’ve got your investors asking, “Where are the users? Where’s the revenue?”

And the answer is: "This part of the business just failed.”

We’ve had a few of those moments over the last three years.

The first 18 months were relatively smooth – we launched the app. But after 2022, we tried to go deeper. We had to re-platform. It was expensive. We brought everything in-house.

That payroll failure cost us dearly.

And then there were external challenges. At the time, the UAE was on the money laundering watchlist. That meant international banks wouldn’t touch us.

Only about a year ago, one of them finally turned around and said, “Okay, we’ll work with you now.”

In fact, one of the major companies we work with in the U.S.—a huge, multi-billion dollar global payments business – we were the first financial institution they’d ever onboarded in this region.

That tells you just how nascent things still are here.

And those were the hardest moments – not making progress, having tough conversations with investors, and feeling stuck.

Hopefully, the worst of those are behind us. Sure, we’ll have more challenges ahead – but when things are working, that reduces the stress levels dramatically.

We touched earlier on liquidity – and also the lack of realised success stories in the region. There’s a lot of paper gains at the moment, but not as many tangible outcomes yet.

Where do you see HubPay in that equation? What's your long-term vision – are you thinking IPO, acquisition?

I think, like most businesses, there are usually three potential paths to exit.

First, there’s the private equity route – we’ve seen examples like Brookfield acquiring Network International, or Magnati going through a successful transaction.

Then there’s the trade sale path – being acquired by a major international fintech looking to enter this market. Because the reality is, none of the big global players are active in this region yet.

You could imagine an Alipay, or someone similar, coming in.

And finally, there’s the IPO route.

Historically, that wasn’t really viable in this region – but that’s starting to change. Like I mentioned earlier, we’re at a genuine inflection point in this market, and that’s playing out across several verticals.

Talent is coming in. Investment is coming in.

Golden Gate Ventures, for example, just opened their first office in Doha, Qatar. They weren’t here before. You can credit firms like Signal Peak for doing the early groundwork, but now others are following.

We’ve seen some great recent examples – Talabat’s IPO was a roaring success, and there are significant reforms going into Tadawul in Saudi Arabia. The ADX in Abu Dhabi has also made a lot of progress.

So you now have three meaningful exchanges in the region. That might be all you need for a thriving exit ecosystem. There’s room for cooperation and consolidation, but the opportunity is definitely there.

As for us – we’ve got a long road ahead, and we’re not slowing down.

There’s no one else doing exactly what we’re doing in this market. We’re the only regulated fintech in the UAE operating across both retail and corporate, and we’re the first to have launched new business accounts alongside a crypto payments solution.

So yes – an IPO would be the dream scenario.

And hopefully, we’ll be part of that new generation of fintechs that help push this whole ecosystem a step forward.

Lastly, Hubpay publishes a weekly FX report. Is there a macro trend you’ve been watching closely – something that you think others might be overlooking right now?

Well, I wouldn't say others are overlooking it – I'm not an economist, so I wouldn’t claim to have some secret insight others don’t.

But I do think one macro trend that’s starting to look genuinely alarming – and was probably underestimated early on – is the escalation of tariff wars under the current U.S. administration.

Initially, there was a belief that it might follow a similar pattern to President Trump’s first term – some chaos, some headlines, but mostly showmanship.

But now it’s starting to feel more serious.

David Frum, the U.S. editor at The Atlantic, put it well recently – there’s a different level of malignancy in the current administration’s posture.

So unfortunately, I think tariff tensions are only going to intensify, and that's going to carry real economic consequences.

J.P. Morgan recently pegged the risk of a U.S. recession at 40% this year. I’d argue that figure’s only going to rise the longer this continues.

If we do enter a recession, that could trigger a major stock market correction. The big question then becomes:

• Does that lead to deflationary pressure and a drop in interest rates?

• Or do we hit a worst-case stagflation scenario—where inflation stays high but we’ve also managed to kill growth?

That would be quite the crowning achievement for this administration.

You look at some of the noise over the last week – from people like Martin Wolf and other commentators – there was a sense that markets were pricing in just a bit of turbulence, but assumed we’d be fine, that a new president would support stock markets and calm things down.

But now? It’s starting to look like the chaos is the point.

So we’ll see how that plays out – but from an FX perspective, it’s going to be a major factor influencing dollar strength, global investment flows, and broader emerging market risk.