Gig platforms offer seamless checkout for buyers, but emerging market payouts remain broken for workers.
In June 2026, member states from more than 180 countries convened for the International Labour Conference to determine international labor standards for digital platform workers. However, even with those standards set, payments remain a big issue.
Imagine a freelance developer in Lagos, who successfully completes a project for a client in London on Upwork. While the client’s payment is secured instantly, the developer faces a mandatory five-day security hold on their funds, followed by conversion to Naira at unfavorable rates, and fees of up to $20 per withdrawal, all eroding a significant portion of their earnings.
The gig economy has taken off like a rocket around the world, making up for 46% of the global workforce in 2025. Global projections state that it is set to increase to $2.52 trillion by 2035 from $674 billion in 2026. And it is expanding aggressively in the Global South. According to recent Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) numbers, emerging markets have growth rates of roughly 21% in India, 17% in Egypt, and 16% in Argentina and Brazil.
Platforms such as Uber Inc. for drivers and Upwork for freelancers offer great opportunities for a second or even a primary income. However, while these companies provide seamless purchasing options for their services, they have largely not adapted their payout structures for workers in emerging markets.
Beyond the lack of stability and control that can come with side hustles, paying workers simply and on time remains a challenge for many gig economy platforms.
Funds get stuck between payer and recipient as they navigate local currencies across fragmented banking and mobile money ecosystems, compliantly and at speed. For all the sophistication of modern payment infrastructure, the last mile of the payout stack remains one of the most technically underserved problems in the industry.
Paying is harder than it looks. There are dozens of local currencies, many with volatile exchange rates and limited convertibility. To pay in a timely, consistent manner, platforms must have local liquidity ready to go, which can be cumbersome when applied globally. Compliance complexities, such as know your consumer (KYC) and AML requirements, vary by region, while worker classification and tax withholding obligations differ.
Additionally, many workers rely on being paid via mobile money such as M-Pesa in Africa, digital wallets, and cash-out networks rather than bank accounts, which have low penetration in some regions.
There are no dominant payout rails, meaning a platform operating in Kenya, Nigeria, Brazil, and Colombia is working with M-Pesa, bank transfers, PIX, and PSE simultaneously. Each comes with unique settlement times, failure rates, and reconciliation requirements. These issues result in delays, unfavorable exchange rates and high cash-out fees that are all absorbed by workers.
Beyond a minor inconvenience, these issues can mean not eating or paying rent for some who live day to day. As a result, workers switch to whichever platform pays fastest, while platforms face churn and risk their local reputations. Marginal inefficiencies, such as failed transaction fees, can add up significantly for platforms such as Rappi and Glovo, which process millions of transactions per week.
Regulatory pressure is also building. The ILC conference this month will determine standards for digital platform workers, including employment classification, pay transparency, and social protection.
Platforms are exploring multiple solutions for workers’ payment issues in emerging markets.
Aggregator models with multiple partners are one model that helps, but simultaneously increases operational overheads, with ongoing liquidity issues. Local wallets that are pre-funded require capital and incur high management costs, making them a barrier of entry for small to medium businesses. Earned wage access ensures workers are paid on time; however, it doesn’t resolve fees. Partnerships with local in-market banks provide faster settlements, with platforms owning compliance and currency conversions.
Single APIs may increase costs for platforms; however, they handle the complexities of local rails, currencies, payment methods, and compliance across multiple markets, making it seamless for platforms to pay workers with minimal overhead.
It can’t be denied that side jobs and flexible working are an attractive opportunity for many, particularly in emerging markets. However, delayed payouts for workers who live paycheck to paycheck is one practical aspect that impedes on a stable standard of living and erodes trust. Those looking to expand their billion-dollar businesses must ensure that the experience is seamless not only for the customer but for all parties involved.
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Carlos Menendez, chief operating officer of dLocal, is a seasoned general manager with extensive global experience in creating and scaling businesses. Prior to dLocal, he spent 14 years at Mastercard, most recently as president of the Global Commercialization Office, and 14 years at Citi, serving senior roles such as COO of Western Europe Retail Banking, EMEA Bankcards regional director, and CFO of Citibank USA. He holds a BA in Economics from Harvard University, an MBA in Finance from The Wharton School, and an MA in International Studies from the Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania.
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From MNT-Halan to Zeepay, digital pioneers are building a high-value corridor to the Middle East.
As African fintech matures, companies that once focused on domestic markets are now increasingly seeing Dubai as a strategic base for MENA and international expansion.
Some key players are already on the move. Egypt’s fintech giant MNT-Halan recently launched in Dubai with salary-financing products, while Paymob Technologies has expanded across the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Oman — securing a full UAE Central Bank license last year. Nigeria’s Innovate1Pay runs global operations from Dubai’s Jumeirah since 2019. Lagos-based Flutterwave, one of Africa’s first and fastest-growing fintech unicorns, will soon be the latest to set up shop in the UAE after expanding into Saudi Arabia and Bahrain in 2024.
A key driver of this expansion is the remittance corridor between the Gulf and Africa. Researchers estimate that between 3 million and 5 million African migrants now live and work across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), including large Egyptian, Sudanese, Ethiopian, Kenyan and Ugandan communities. According to the World Bank, global remittances to Africa reached $109 billion in 2024. About a third comes from the GCC, but a lot of transfers remain unrecorded in national data sets.
Currently, a lot of the money still moves around in cash, through operators such as Western Union, MoneyGram or Gulf exchange houses, where the cost for sending funds averages between 8% and 9% — among the highest in the world.
This opens a clear opportunity for lower-cost digital alternatives. A recent Visa study found nearly two-thirds of UAE residents now prefer digital apps over physical locations for sending money abroad. Key drivers include ease of use (50%), followed by safety, privacy and speed (46%). Cashless solutions are heavily encouraged by most GCC governments to increase compliance, traceability and transparency.
Some companies like Zeepay, a Ghana-based payment firm that already operates in 25 countries, are gearing up to tap into that market and the recent war in the Middle East is far from deterring their motivation.
“For us, it’s a new chapter. We are eager to make an impact and become the remittance solution in the Gulf,” said Kojo Amofa, Partnerships Manager at Zeepay. “Many migrant workers want to send money home, and the current volatility creates an even more drastic need that we want to answer.”
For Zeepay, the UAE is the natural entry point. It is the MENA region’s most mature tech hub and the world’s third-largest remittance sender — sometimes described as a financial “switchboard” for Africa-bound flows. To make its first steps, the company is looking for partnerships with digital payment firms already located in Dubai or Abu Dhabi, who would be interested in trying out an African remittance corridor.
“We need to test the appetite. Rather than entering a market we are not native to, we prefer collaboration so that our services can be tried out,” said Amofa. “Once there is a significant level of interest, we can then start to explore creating a physical presence.”
While exploring options in the GCC, the teams at Zeepay, like many African startups, are also keeping an eye open for funding opportunities.
In 2025, African Fintechs raised $1.5 billion across 150 deals, according to data from global investment platform Partech Partners. A growing number of deals involve GCC investors as sovereign wealth funds and family offices from the UAE and Saudi Arabia are increasing their exposure to African assets. In the past decade, GCC countries have invested more than $100 billion in the continent.
In 2022, Nigeria’s Moove.io — a mobility fintech that provides car loans and operates a green ride-hailing platform — raised a $30 million private credit sukuk arranged by Franklin Templeton Investments in Dubai. It later opened an office in the UAE to oversee its MENA expansion.
More recently, Kenya’s iconic fintech M-Pesa has teamed up with the UAE-based ADI Foundation to explore blockchain. The partnership gains significant weight from ADI’s parent company, IHC — a $240 billion giant chaired by the UAE president’s brother.
For Gulf investors, the appeal is straightforward: Africa remains the fastest-growing fintech market globally, with revenues projected to rise thirteenfold to $65 billion by 2030, according to Boston Consulting Group. For now, digital payment tools still dominate, but the next phase is expected to center on small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) finance, credit, and broader digital banking services.
In the medium-long term, a Gulf–Africa fintech corridor is taking shape, with companies scaling up and capital circulating between the two regions. In the short term, there are some regulatory bottlenecks and geopolitical challenges ahead. The war in the Middle East might slow down Gulf investments for a while as governments prioritize spending money at home.