Australian listed financial technology and payments specialist Novatti is set to join a lengthening queue of digital banking players. Unlike other emerging fintechs, Novatti is no starry-eyed start-up, but a fully operational firm with 60 employees, an Australian financial services licence and a track record of financial services delivery.Novatti listed on the ASX in early 2016 after evolving over the previous twenty years. Ever since then it has been establishing a presence in offshore remittances among Asian communities, e-payments in the UK and prepaid cards, to name a few items.The company has an Australian financial services licence and a money remitter's licence. In the UK, Novatti is an agent of an e-money issuer. Longer term, group CEO Peter Cook plans to use some of his firm's own digital technology and import the rest. Novatti signed a deal with Middle Eastern bank Banque Bemo Saudi Fransi to power its agency banking services and mobile payments platform to provide virtual banking services to the unbanked in isolated regions such as Syria.The company announced the deal with the bank via the ASX earlier this week, and said it expected to earn revenue of US$318,000 for FY18 and US$477,000 for FY19.Under the NGO umbrella, a key program of the bank is to enable the distribution of financial aid to rural consumers within Syria, most of whom come from marginalised communities without access to basic banking and financial services."In this case, as part of our sanctions approval, we have committed to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) that we will build in additional compliance supporting software and that we will undertake certain monitoring of transactions," Cook said.He said one important aspect of the Syria deal was that the core technology used is similar to what will be used in Australia - it's a way of field testing the company's core banking service. "It's like M-Pesa in Kenya," Cook said. "Some people call it mobile money. Nowadays it might be called branchless banking - extending services to somewhere that is missing its branches."The funds that are being managed in this scenario are generally very small - down to single digits of dollars in a transaction.  Much of the money moving through the system will be disbursement of aid, and financial inclusion for many rural and dispossessed Syrians - in particular females in these marginalised communities who are meant to be looking after basic financial needs for their families."  Further, at some point there will be a reconstruction phase for Syria, and Cook said his company's digital banking platform "will be excellent infrastructure for the future of these citizens."  Cook said he expected more of the funds being retained in the villages at the end of the aid line. These humanitarian aims fit with DFAT's own aims."We are seeing more and more places where more money stays digital, and for longer (ie, for more transactions) but it takes a few years," he said.Cook said the firm was already running operations in the areas of small