The Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) has issued its open banking policy which outlines its objective for implementation in Saudi and the benefits that the financial sector stands to gain from it. SAMA plans to go live with its open banking ecosystem by the first half of 2022. The issuance of this policy builds on the efforts of SAMA in pursuing the strategic objectives of the Financial Sector Development Program, outlining its commitment to promoting innovation, and trust within the sector, re-enforcing competition and raising efficiency. It is also aligned with the SAMA’s efforts to ensure the sector’s infrastructure readiness to…

Emirates NBD has rolled out the digital onboarding option for new customers to have their identity documents verified using contactless NFC technology when opening a bank account via its mobile app. The bank’s TruID solution uses NFC technology to read information from embedded chips in the documents and seamlessly extract data to autofill a digital account application. The customer is then prompted to take a selfie within the app to complete the process. Emirates NBD’s TruID digital identity verification solution was developed as part of the bank’s collaboration with fintech startups VisionLabs and Smart Engines. Apple users can have their…

Sarwa, a Dubai-based investment advisory platform, was granted a fintech experimental permit by the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) of Saudi Arabia and will be expanding its service there. With the new license in hand, Sarwa can offer its wealth management services to make investing more low-cost, transparent, and accessible to everyone in Saudi Arabia, both locals, and expats. Through the website, clients can have a recommended portfolio that reflects their goals and risk appetite and reportedly open an account in minutes. “As founders from the region, our mission is to make smart financial services accessible and affordable to everyone here.…

The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) has released a draft document outlining a five-year digitalization plan to modernize the country’s domestic payment landscape. The document, titled Kenya National Payments System Vision and Strategy 2021 – 2025 and released in December 2020, stresses the regulator’s commitment to establishing a regulatory landscape that’s conducive to innovation, as well as embracing open banking and APIs, among other key areas of focus. In the document, the CBK says it will work to define standards for API development and mandate data portability with hopes that more options and innovative solutions will be made available for…

The National Bank of Ras Al Khaimah (RAKBANK) has announced the renewal of its partnership with Invoice Bazaar, a Dubai startup operating in the area of receivables finance. The renewed partnership is part of the bank’s strategy to offer small and medium businesses (SME) financial solutions to e-commerce traders that include a comprehensive suite of banking services, short term working capital loans, cloud based accounting solutions, and instant access to RAKBANK SMEsouk portal. The e-commerce solution is available to SMEs and retailers of all sizes, including startups with RAKstarter Zero Balance Account. Additionally, the solution covers businesses’ preferential terms on…

Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC), established by the Government of Dubai to establish a hub for global commodities trade, registered 2025 new companies in 2020, its highest number of registrations in 5 years. DMCC’s strong performance is primarily due to the Business Support Package launched in March 2020 that saw interest from companies in 149 countries. This was the business hub’s largest commercial offer, offering a wide range of incentives and value added services to both existing and new companies in the Free Zone. DMCC also made enhancements to its customer service with its simplified and fully digitalised set up…

The Arab Investment Bank announced that it has selected Temenos, a Swiss banking software company to bolster its digital banking transformation journey. Arab Investment Bank chose the capabilities of Temenos Infinity and Temenos Payments to improve performance, drive its digital growth strategy and provide a boost to financial inclusion for millions of Egyptians. The Egyptian bank already uses Temenos Transact as its core banking technology. With Temenos Infinity, the bank has embarked on a digital transformation journey to make banking and financial services easier, faster and more accessible for all Egyptians. Egypt has an adult population of over 67 million…

Zain Group, a telecommunications company in the Middle East and North Africa region, announced that its fintech arm Tamam has been officially licensed by the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) to provide micro-financing services to consumers across the Kingdom. This makes Tamam the first entity in the Kingdom and the region to be licensed by a regulator to offer consumer micro loans via a fully digital customer experience, through a mobile app. The licensing follows the completion of an eighteen-months testing period within SAMA’s Regulatory Sandbox. The rigorous process saw the app and the service vetted for functionality, security, and compatibility with…

Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) and Huawei Consumer Business Group announced the launch of the Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) digital nol cards and nol Pay mobile app on the Huawei AppGallery. This collaboration is in line with the RTA’s plan to adopt advanced and innovative technologies into Dubai’s transport sector as part of the UAE Strategy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The new app allows users to buy tickets for Dubai metro, water buses, trams and more through nol Pay app and Huawei Wallet. They can also recharge their digital nol cards through the app directly. Users can download…

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is the largest fintech hub for startups in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), housing about 50% of the region’s fintech companies. In the UAE, two leading financial free zones, Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) and Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), deserve much of the credit for the country’s burgeoning fintech sector and are behind some of the region’s most notable fintech initiatives including the DIFC Fintech Hive, the US$100 million DIFC Fintech Fund, the ADGM RegLab fintech sandbox and the Plug and Play ADGM accelerator program. In 2020, the UAE’s fintech industry continued…

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is the largest fintech hub in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and home to half of the region’s fintech companies. As of November 2020, the UAE accounted for over 60% of funds raised in MENA for venture capital investment. In the UAE, free zones the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) and the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) have been pushing to become fintech hotspots, launching initiatives of their own and introducing new regulations this year to provide a favorable landscape for companies in the sector to thrive. DIFC fintech community continues to grow…

Fintech News Middle East would like to take this opportunity to wish all our readers a very Happy New Year. We will be taking a break from the 29th December 2020 to the 3rd January 2021. Until then, you can access some of our year-end articles that may be of interest to you. We look forward to seeing you all again on the 3th January 2021! https://fintechnews.ae/7064/fintech/new-report-calls-for-open-banking-harmonization-across-the-arab-world/ https://fintechnews.ae/7052/virtual-banking/20-neobanks-in-the-middle-east/ https://fintechnews.ae/7018/nigeria/booming-nigerian-fintech-sector-could-see-revenues-reach-us543m-by-2022/ https://fintechnews.ae/6877/saudiarabia/saudi-and-uae-central-banks-release-report-on-joint-digital-currency-project-aber/ https://fintechnews.ae/6864/fintech/open-banking-makes-foray-into-the-middle-east/ https://fintechnews.ae/6733/virtual-banking/neobanks-make-inroads-in-the-uae/ https://fintechnews.ae/5486/abudhabi/uae-leads-mena-in-financial-inclusion-research/ https://fintechnews.ae/6785/fintechdubai/difc-innovation-hub-launched-to-bolster-dubais-fintech-ecosystem/

tabby, a Middle East “Buy Now Pay Later” platform, announced that it has partnered with Swedish home furnishing retailer, IKEA to provide customers in the UAE with the flexibility to pay in interest-free installments for their online and in-store purchases. tabby enables customers to purchase products online or in IKEA stores and pay after 14 days or in installments over three months. The flexible payment solution is available in-store in Dubai at IKEA Festival Plaza and Festival City, in Abu Dhabi at IKEA Yas Island, Al Ain Bawadi and Al Wahda and will roll out online by the end of…

Saudi Aramco Development Company, a subsidiary of Aramco, announced it had teamed up with Google Cloud to offer high-performance, low-latency cloud services to enterprise customers in Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom is being added to the global network of Google Cloud Platform regions, as part of a strategic alliance agreement signed between Saudi Aramco and Google Cloud. Google Cloud will establish and operate a new cloud region in Saudi Arabia, while a new company will be formed following all required regulatory clearances to supply cloud solutions and services to enterprise customers, with an emphasis on businesses inside Saudi Arabia. This new…

Abu Dhabi’s Technology Innovation Institute (TII), the applied research pillar of the Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC), announced that its Cryptography Research Centre (CRC) has built the UAE’s first national and sovereign crypto library. By leveraging a combination of custom symmetric and asymmetric cryptographic primitives, the national crypto library is designed, developed and tested to safeguard confidential and high-security information. Researchers at CRC, one of TII’s initial seven dedicated research centers, have already released multiple versions of the crypto library and are working on its seamless integration into the UAE’s critical digital infrastructure. CRC currently employs and collaborates with scientists…

The UAE e-commerce sector is expected to continue on an upward trajectory due to the digital payments boom during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a joint study by Dubai Economy and Visa. The “United Arab Emirates (UAE) eCommerce Landscape 2020” report reflects market activity over the last 12 months and, in particular, the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak, highlighting key trends and insights drawn from Visa’s transaction data on how and where consumers have been spending. The report also highlights new challenges and opportunities that the crisis has created. The shift to shopping online is expected to hold long-term as…

First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB) has partnered with Visa to launch digital payment solutions, the Visa Central Travel Account and Virtual Corporate Cards, to cater to its corporate clients. The Central Travel Account solution was designed to make it easier for companies to centrally manage travel payments by consolidating and matching key travel data with transactional financial data. This will help corporates in tracking and managing their travel spends and enable them to produce detailed reports highlighting savings. FAB also unveiled the Visa Virtual Corporate Cards, supported via Visa’s Payables Automation (VPA) solution, to address payment challenges in business-to-business (B2B)…

Airome Technologies, a Singapore-based developer of cybersecurity solutions for digital banking and e-document management systems, has been working with authentication and transaction confirmation technologies for a while, creating advanced products in this field. However, with the pandemic situation the company has faced a new challenge as to how to personalise a user’s device to enable them to authenticate in this new normal. As Airome Technologies works with critical data, they need to use more than just passwords to authenticate a user. It is essential to provide strong cryptographic authentication with key distribution schemes. For an example, a standard case for…

Cloud banking platform Mambu announced that they have set up a new office in Abu Dhabi as the United Arab Emirates has quickly emerged as a key market for it. As a state-of-the-art hub, the UAE is consistently evolving and developing the junction of financial services and technology. The fintech solutions that the country supports include mobile banking and crypto currency. With the highest number of mobile penetrations globally at 173 percent, the region offers an extensive customer base for digital banking. “Our philosophy of building digital attackers and neobanks future-proof architecture, while enabling them to adopt the latest cloud-based…

Amazon has launched its Amazon Payment Services, previously known as PAYFORT, as a payment processing service in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region aiming to empower businesses with simple, affordable, and trusted online payment experiences. The newly launched Amazon Payment Services provides secure online payment services that are easy-to-use, leveraging Amazon scalable and reliable technologies. Established in 2013 as one of the first fintech companies in the region, PAYFORT has gained a deep understanding of businesses’ needs across the region. In 2017, Amazon acquired PAYFORT as part of the Souq Group acquisition. Since then, the focus has been…