Munich-based Fidor Bank is expanding to Dubai. The move will enable the bank to better serve companies outside of Europe, and comes less than a year after the innovative FI opened offices in the U.K. Fidor CEO Matthias Kröner called the expansion “only a matter of time” given the growing number of inquiries he says his bank has received from companies in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. “The Dubai Silicon Oasis is an ideal location for this project, because it’s one of the biggest free zones in the Middle East, with more than 1,000 companies already installed,” he said.

To lead operations in Dubai, Fidor Bank has hired Gé Drossaert (pictured) to serve as managing director. Drossaert comes to Fidor with more than 20 years’ experience in finance and IT, having worked as CTO of banking and capital markets for Asia, Middle East, and Africa for Computer Sciences Corporation, and as head of transformation and change at Saudi Hollandi Bank.

Fidor Bank received its banking license in 2009 and demonstrated its FidorPay-Account at FinovateEurope 2011. One of the world’s more innovative banks when it comes to technology, Fidor Bank was the first bank to deploy the Ripple protocol back in 2014, and was a winner of the Bank Innovation Award in 2013. More recently, Fidor teamed up with Telefonica Germany to launch a mobile bank account, O2 Banking, and earned a spot in The FinTech50’s Inaugural Hall of Fame. Fidor Bank presented “No Stack Banking” at our developers conference, FinDEVr San Francisco 2015, and “How to Start Your Digital Bank—Mobile Apps and APIs Included,” at FinDEVr New York 2016 this spring.