Most companies say they’re using AI. Very few can show you where it’s creating value. Ammar Naqvi has spent his career building technology where mistakes cost real money: from Amazon’s video platform to the AI that underwrites drivers across Latin America.

Ammar has led engineering at Amazon (on what became Prime Video), Careem, Talabat, and Moove, where he was CTO, helping scale a mobility fintech from early operations into an international business. Today at OneCarNow, he builds AI for underwriting, fraud detection, KYC and alternative credit scoring for thousands of gig workers in Mexico and Brazil.

In this episode we cover:

• How to build AI that solves real business problems
• What companies get wrong when scaling engineering teams
• How to lead remote and distributed teams without slowing down
• Build, buy or partner: the CTO decision framework
• What founders should know before hiring a CTO or outsourcing delivery
• Why automotive is becoming a fintech, data and trust problem

Chapters
00:00 Intro
[00:00] The first barrier Ammar broke
[00:00] What Amazon taught him about scale
[00:00] Careem, Talabat and building for MENA
[00:00] Moove: turning vehicle financing into a tech platform
[00:00] OneCarNow: AI for people with no credit history
[00:00] AI demo vs AI system
[00:00] Leading high-performing remote teams
[00:00] Build, buy or partner?
[00:00] The future of automotive and mobility
[00:00] What founders and investors get wrong
[00:00] AI and the next 5 years: bold predictions
[00:00] One tool, one tactic, one truth
[00:00] Quickfire close

Breaking Down Barriers is a podcast for founders, CEOs, CTOs and investors building in MENA and beyond.

Underneath every great financial ecosystem is infrastructure the systems that let money, data, and trust move seamlessly. In this episode, we sit down with Tewfik, Chief Product Officer at Lean Technologies, the company that became the first licensed open banking provider in both the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

Five years ago, open banking didn't exist in the Gulf. There was no local playbook, no proven consumer behavior, and a cash-heavy market that had never been asked to authenticate a payment through a banking app. Today, Lean has processed over 5B+ in transaction volume and works with 300+ enterprise clients banks and fintechs alike.

But this conversation goes far beyond open banking. We talk about what it takes to become the default infrastructure layer for an entire region's financial system, why fintech "winning" doesn't mean replacing banks, why financial data might be a bigger opportunity than payments themselves, and how AI is about to rewrite decisioning, fraud detection, and UX from the ground up.

In this episode, we cover:

• Introduction: Why infrastructure is the real story in fintech
• Building what didn't exist: Lean's earliest days and the friction of localising open banking in MENA
• Why early clients stayed before the market was ready
• Has fintech actually won? Banks vs. fintechs vs. infrastructure
• Becoming the "AWS" or "Stripe" of financial infrastructure in MENA
• The hardest problems Lean solves that most companies never see
• Open finance as a credit access and financial inclusion story
• Why verified financial data may be the biggest transformation in financial services
• Inside the new Pay by Bank suite: Deposits, Collections, Checkout, and Pay by Link
• How the UAE is leapfrogging markets like the UK in open banking
• Building a world-class team: hiring for people who are "bothered by things being broken"
• AI and financial services: rethinking infrastructure, decisioning, and UX from scratch
• Will traditional credit scores exist by 2030?
• AI agents managing our financial lives - how close are we?
• What the biggest fintech company of 2030 might look like
• What's next for Lean beyond open banking
• Quickfire round: cards vs. A2A payments, contrarian beliefs, and Lean's best early bet

About the guest:
Tewfik is Chief Product Officer at Lean Technologies, the leading open banking infrastructure provider in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Under his product leadership, Lean has scaled to power connectivity, payments, and financial data infrastructure for over 300 enterprise clients across the region.

About Breaking Down Barriers:
Breaking Down Barriers is a podcast exploring the people and companies redefining industries — from fintech to infrastructure to AI. Each episode goes beyond the headlines to understand what it actually takes to build something that didn't exist before.

🔔 Subscribe for more conversations with the founders and operators building the future of finance and technology.

From Lightspeed Partner to a MENA fintech operator Julie Kainz on the leap from VC to building inside Lean Technologies, the move from London to Dubai, and the lessons from backing companies like Granola, PlanA, Hook, CuspAI and Pyne.

In this episode:

• Why Julie left a top global fund to go all-in on an operator role
• The real differences between London, SF and MENA's startup ecosystems
• What MENA's startup scene needs most right now — capital, talent or something else
• Her biggest lessons from working with hundreds of founders
• Why fundraising is about momentum and story, not just metrics
• The ""less is more"" rule for building your cap table

Guest: Julie Kainz, Corporate Development, Lean Technologies

Subscribe @BreakingDownBarrierspod
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Connect with Ricci Putnam:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ricci-putnam/