Yes, they have. Utrust, Monetha, Pumapay, Agate - also developing similar payment platforms. But for different regions...

I don't think they have plans yet to expand to other regions. They are called Mena for a reason and they really should focus on that region before even thinking about expanding.

It's quite interesting. I have never encountered any project like that. I'm curious to see how it's going to be if it's true.

Asia os big. I guess they could expand to the neighboring countries of the Mena region that also have los of unbanked people.

Maybe he means decentralized exchanges, such as IDEX or Forkdelta? Decentralized exchanges still have drawbacks, the main ones are low volumes.

You are right, IDEX exchange every day becomes more popular, but in order for their servers to withstand the load they need to think how to stop soft-bots from trading.

It's no wonder that there are a lot of similar projects. To have a new, innovative idea for a project is very rare. But I don't see a big problem in this. How do you say? Competition is good for business. There can be more successful, coexisting projects in the end. For example because they are focusing on different regions or a different group of customers/users.

IDEX is a hybrid exchange. The final settlement takes place on IDEX' systems (explaining why IDEX was unavailable a while ago), introducing a bit of a black box. So I am unsure IDEX would qualify as sufficiently transparent for Islamic banking.

That only leaves the fully on-chain decentralized exchanges, and perhaps over-the-counter (over-the-internet)?

Probably yes, but OTC is a pain in the ass and a reason why exchanges exist in the first place. A Dex supporting atomic swaps would be the best solution I think. Something like the Komodo exchange.