Introduction to the Tunisian Economy in 1967
1967 seems like a distant date. It is. This was the year of a world without instant payment platforms, digital assets, connected freelancers, and SaaS startups that pay their servers in foreign currencies and sell their services abroad. Yet, for too long, Tunisia has been asking its entrepreneurs to compete in the global economy with this outdated mindset.
The Paradox of Economic Growth
The paradox is cruel. We want export-oriented startups, international SMEs, young talents capable of selling to the world, innovative fintechs, and competitive digital services. But we often impose rules designed for an era when finance moved slowly, economic borders were thicker, and digital technology had not yet disrupted our way of paying, saving, borrowing, investing, and trading. Fintech, in particular, has come to disrupt this old architecture. It is no longer a technological curiosity, but a mobile payment that replaces a queue, a platform that allows a merchant, artisan, freelancer, or startup to enter the real circulation of the global economy. This is where its importance lies. Fintech does not only modernize financial services, it expands their scope, gives depth to markets, and makes flows more readable, faster, and sometimes more transparent.
The Importance of Fintech
The IMF's work reminds us that fintechs can contribute to mitigating certain financial risks by strengthening decentralization, diversification, efficiency, and transparency in the provision of services. However, we must avoid easy enthusiasm. Not all fintechs are equal in terms of inclusion. Some facilitate payments, others improve savings, and others facilitate credit. The most inclusive ones are often the simplest in appearance: digital payment and digital savings. These are the ones that open the first door, the one that allows financial existence.
Fintech in Africa
In Sub-Saharan Africa, the signal is powerful. Lending fintech for micro and small enterprises has grown from 13% to 88% of total fintech financing between 2020 and 2023. However, a fintech does not grow in the sand. It needs solid foundations, an institutional framework, financial depth, digital infrastructure, reliable mobile access, digital identity, payment interoperability, and real consumer protection. This is where the real difficulty begins. Regulation.
The Challenge of Regulation
Too few rules, and innovation becomes a gray area. Cyber risk can spread. The system can absorb fragilities that it does not see coming. Too many rules, and innovation dies before reaching its market. Entrepreneurs circumvent. Talents leave. Investors hesitate. Useful solutions remain at the promise stage. Regulation then becomes less of a safeguard and more of a ceiling. Everything depends on the scale of the cursor. This fragile balance between protection and openness. Good regulation must allow progress without falling. Because the raw material of fintech, ultimately, is not technology, it's trust. Without trust, there is no use. And without use, there is no inclusion.
The Tunisian Economy and Fintech
For Tunisia, this question is no longer theoretical, it is existential. Our country has talents, engineers, developers, and founders. But too often, these talents advance in a digital economy weighed down by administrative chains. They do not ask for a privilege. They simply ask for the normal tools of global competition. However, while they wait, the world moves forward. This is why the new exchange code, currently being examined by the finance commission of the ARP, is probably one of the most structuring texts for fintechs and, beyond, for the entire Tunisian economy. This text can change the daily life of thousands of economic actors: startups, export-oriented SMEs, freelancers, investors.
The New Exchange Code
The new text, which is expected, opens up decisive perspectives: legally framing international payment platforms like PayPal or Stripe, allowing the declaration and detention of digital assets under certain conditions, facilitating the repatriation of profits and revenue from sales, and evolving access to foreign currency accounts for residents engaged in economic activity. These advances send a signal, that of a country that finally tells its entrepreneurs: we will adapt our rules to this reality. Ultimately, the question is simple: do we want our entrepreneurs to create, grow, and export from here? Or do we accept that they imagine in Tunisia but structure elsewhere because the local framework does not follow the speed of their ambition?
