Doha, Qatar, October 12th, 2026, FinanceWire
The Tintra founder argues that the infrastructure for trade and payments between Global South economies should be built for those markets from the ground up.
Tintra, the AI-native financial infrastructure company founded by Dickie Shearer, has moved from design and build into deployment and is now launching across Africa and beyond. The company builds banking and settlement systems designed specifically for emerging markets.
Dickie Shearer, founder of Tintra, is drawing attention to one of the least visible but most consequential parts of global finance, the systems that move and settle value across borders between emerging economies.
The cost of that movement remains stubbornly high. According to the World Bank, the global average cost of sending $200 across borders was 6.36 percent in the third quarter of 2025, more than double the 3 percent target set under the UN Sustainable Development Goals for 2030.
Infrastructure Built Elsewhere
Much of the infrastructure behind cross-border finance was designed around the needs and assumptions of established Western economies. Shearer argues that when trade and payments flow between emerging markets, relying on systems built for other economies leaves those markets dependent on architecture that was never designed with them in mind.
His answer is to rethink the architecture rather than patch it. He has written that the world makes far more sense once people “stop viewing it through the framing you inherited,” and he applies the same principle to the plumbing of global finance.
Three Building Blocks
Shearer’s approach rests on three ideas. The first is cultural intelligence, designing systems that reflect how local economies actually function, including the informal and trust-based networks through which so much value moves.
The second is regulatory interoperability. Every cross-border transaction has to satisfy the rules of more than one jurisdiction, and infrastructure built to operate across different regulatory regimes removes a major source of friction.
The third is South-South trade, making it simpler for emerging economies to trade and settle directly with one another.
Early Signs of Change
Parts of this shift are already underway. In 2023, India connected its Unified Payments Interface with Singapore’s PayNow, allowing users in both countries to send money across the border through their everyday payment apps. Linkages like this show what becomes possible when national payment systems are designed to connect with one another.
Shearer sees such developments as part of a more multipolar financial order, with emerging economies increasingly building and operating the infrastructure they depend on. For him, financial sovereignty sits at the heart of that next era.
The AI-Native Approach
These ideas come together at Tintra, the company Shearer founded, which is developing AI-native cross-border financial and settlement systems for emerging markets. Rather than layering artificial intelligence onto legacy systems, the approach is to build infrastructure that learns from local behaviour and regional trade realities from the start.
Shearer is based in the Middle East and works across Africa, Asia and emerging markets. His writing on finance, culture and the Global South is published at dickieshearer.com, and more about Tintra is available at tintra.net. For Shearer, the goal is cross-border infrastructure that serves the economies using it, designed around the people and businesses on both sides of every transaction.
About Dickie Shearer
Dickie Shearer is a cultural futurist, Global South systems thinker and the founder of Tintra. Based in the Middle East and working across Africa, Asia and emerging markets, he explores how artificial intelligence, financial infrastructure and economic governance shape communities and markets in the Global South. More information is available at dickieshearer.com.
About Tintra
Tintra is an AI-native financial architecture company working across Africa, Asia and emerging markets. It helps nations build financial infrastructure designed around their own culture, regulation and people. More information is available at tintra.net.