Azimuth Dialogue 1: Building the Rails: What Has to Exist Before Anything Scales

Real-time payment systems now move trillions across the world's economies — instant, interoperable, world-class rails for conventional money. For Islamic finance, those rails barely exist. That gap is the panel. Globally there are 484 Islamic fintech firms across 41 countries — and 80% of them sit in just ten. The IFSB's own reports keep returning to the same diagnosis: underdeveloped market infrastructure, thin local-currency sovereign issuance, low trading volumes. Not a demand problem but a plumbing problem. Builders argue about what gets laid first.