What Bankers Need to Know About CFOs and Working Capital Preferences in the Middle East

“Never take your eyes off the cash flow because it’s the lifeblood of business,” British businessman Richard Branson has been quoted as stating. And the sentiment rings true no matter the business, and no matter the vertical in which it operates.

That’s especially true for Growth Corporates, defined as companies with $50 million to $1 billion in annual top lines, and where PYMNTS Intelligence, as commissioned by Visa, has found that the use of external working capital solutions can help these middle-market firms meet the challenges of managing day-to-day operations with a flexibility that helps them thrive rather than just merely survive.

In “The 2024-2025 Growth Corporates Working Capital Index” we found that, across 1,297 CFOs, 23 countries, five global regions, and eight industries, the use of working capital solutions rose this past year, up 13% in 2024. At a high level, 80% of Growth Corporates used at least one working capital solution, ranging from loans to virtual cards.

Greenfield Opportunity

However, in certain regions of the world, greenfield opportunities remain, including Central Europe, the Middle East and Africa (CEMEA), which ranked fourth among the five regions studied in terms of working capital use. The countries in the study included Egypt, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates.  And about the potential in CEMEA, consider that Growth Corporates are expected to greatly increase working capital use to 95% in the months ahead, up from a recent reading of 58%.

CEMEA is marked by a mixture of economies — mature, in some cases, developing in others — but by and large the region’s economy is growing.

The data shows that 7 in 10 CEMEA Growth Corporates say accessing working capital improved business metrics and buyer-supplier relationships. Working capital loans and bank lines of credit are among the most popular working capital solutions CEMEA Growth Corporates used, at 34.5% and 6.9% of firms that used such solutions.

Growth Corporates in the region were most likely to opt for virtual cards as a primary solution, and yet a lack of awareness about the benefits of virtual cards among firms that do not use them in the region has kept utilization relatively low, as measured by adoption rates.

Among Growth Corporates, 5.7% in the region used virtual cards, but 33% of firms said that they’d planned to use virtual cards in the coming year — a growth factor of 5.8x, compared to a 3x growth rate for the nearly 1,300 firms surveyed.

Eyeing Strategic Use of Working Capital

And with some granular detail into the specific industries within CEMEA, the study found that 39% of agriculture Growth Corporates accessed working capital loans in the last year, as did 35% of healthcare Growth Corporate  firms.

In CEMEA, 60% of Growth Corporates used external financing for strategic purposes, which include expected cash flow gaps (31%) and growth initiatives (29%). Companies in the agriculture and healthcare Growth Corporates in the region were likely to use working capital strategically relative to other sectors, such as marketplaces or fleet and mobility. The data shows that 70% of agriculture companies and 74% of healthcare companies in CEMEA used working capital for strategic reasons.