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Over the past few years, Saudi Arabia's fintech sector has gained momentum, benefiting from favourable market conditions, a vibrant startup ecosystem and booming financing activity.
Under the government-led Saudi FinTech Initiative, the number of fintech companies operating in Saudi Arabia increased by 37% between 2020 and 2021, from 60 in 2020 to 82 in 2021.
A record $347 million of venture capital investment was raised, more than 20 times more than the previous year.
This momentum continues in 2022, with growth-stage fintech companies already completing multiple rounds of large funding rounds to drive expansion.
1
Foodics
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Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Riyadh, Foodics has five offices in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt.
is a cloud-based, end-to-end POS and restaurant management solution that provides business owners with a holistic overview of their company and operations. Provide real-time reporting and high-tech inventory management for businesses. Allow them to submit orders to the kitchen and manage employee schedules.
Key features include third-party application integration, digital table management, digital menus, digital kitchen display systems, and the ability to work offline. Serves a range of websites, from dine-in restaurants, cafes and fast food outlets, to bakeries, food trucks and so-called cloud kitchens. Since its inception, it claims to have successfully processed more than 5 billion orders through its platform.
In April 2022, Foodics raised $170 million in Series C funding, saying it would use it to expand regionally and internationally and to fund its M&A strategy, which was launched in January 2022 with the acquisition of POSRocket. The second largest restaurant cloud technology provider in the MENA region. The company also plans to launch and expand new initiatives around fintech, microfinance and supply chain management.
2
STC Pay
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Founded in October 2018, STC Pay is a wholly-owned fintech subsidiary of the Saudi Telecom Corporation (STC) Group. The company offers a digital wallet service that allows customers to make all their daily financial transactions securely and easily in one app, offering services and features such as transfers, payments, bill settlement, remittances, and group fee tracking.
STC Pay bills itself as the largest digital wallet in the Mena and North Africa region, serving more than 6 million users. In November 2020, the company signed an agreement with Western Union to sell a $200 million 15% minority stake, setting a new milestone.
In June 2021, STC Pay obtained a digital banking license from the local central bank. Since then, the company has been transforming its STC Pay platform into an integrated digital bank called STC Bank, which will offer a large number of banking services digitally.
3
Geidea
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Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Riyadh, Geidea is a fully licensed payment service provider providing digital banking technology, point-of-sale (POS) terminals and business management solutions to financial institutions and small businesses in the retail and digital commerce sectors.
The company said it supports more than 700,000 payment terminals and ATM networks in Saudi Arabia and serves more than 139,000 merchants, including regional and international brands, small and medium-sized businesses, and e-commerce players.
Since at least 2021, Geidea has been expanding in the GCC and the wider MENA region, establishing operations in countries such as Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.
4
Tamara
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Founded in 2020, Tamara is one of the largest buy-and-pay startups in Saudi Arabia, offering shoppers online and in-store bill-sharing services at no cost or interest.
The company has operations in both Saudi Arabia and the UAE and has two main products: Split in 3 (pay in 3 cents for more than 2 months without interest) and Split in 6 (paid in 6 cents with interest over 5 months) free), which can be purchased online and in-store through Tamara's consumer app.
It said it already has more than 1,000 merchants, including IKEA, Namshi, Floward, SACO, Nice One, Whites and Nejree.
In April 2021, Tamara raised $100 million in a round of funding (debt and equity) that was said to be the largest Series A funding round in the MENA region. The round, led by Checkout, aims to help the startup expand in the GCC and menoe-North Africa regions, expand its team size and fund the distribution of its BNPL products.
5
LEAN
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Founded in 2019, Lean Technologies provides fintech platforms and APIs for fintech innovators to seamlessly connect to customers' bank accounts to initiate real-time payments and retrieve account information. Possible use cases for lean technology APIs include digital accounting, robo-advisory, personal finance, BNPL, and P2P lending.
Lean Technologies said it has amassed dozens of major customers, including some of the region's leading financial institutions in verticals such as remittances, cryptocurrencies and investments.
In January 2022, the startup raised $33 million in a Series A funding round led by Sequoia Capital India, marking the U.S. venture capital (VC) firm's first investment in the Gulf Cooperation Council. The company said it intends to use the proceeds to expand its team and expand further in the region.
6
Rasan
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Founded in 2016, Rasan is the technology company behind the pioneering Tameeni insurtech platform and other fintech platforms. The company focuses on building customized technology solutions and expanding multilateral platforms, focusing on simplifying the user experience and driving operational digitization, value chain transformation and cross-sector collaboration in Saudi Arabia and the wider region.
Rasan's brands include Tameeni, an auto and health insurance provider that offers instant policies by letting retail customers compare insurance prices and coverage, then select and pay for the policies of their choice in one place; and Treza, a car rental insurance platform that offers real-time card quotes.
Since 2017, Rasan says its platform has attracted 8 million users and has nearly 25,000 daily traffic.
In November 2021, the startup completed a $24 million investment led by venture capital firm Impact46 to drive its growth and Tameeni's growth, simplify digital innovation and drive sustainable growth in the industry.