Salt Edge expands its open banking services to Saudi Arabia

The Saudi Central Bank sees open banking as pivotal to developing the jurisdiction’s financial services sector and supporting financial inclusion 👇

Salt Edge is expanding its open banking services to Saudi Arabia in a bid to help financial institutions in the jurisdiction bring innovative solutions to market and add to the rise of digital technologies in the region. 

Canada-headquartered Salt Edge is rolling out a set of open banking solutions to help with data sharing and to improve payment methods between consumers and fintechs.  

The Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) sees open banking as pivotal to developing the jurisdiction’s financial services sector and supporting financial inclusion. 

Salt Edge has onboarded onto SAMA’s open banking lab and is in the process of applying to its regulatory sandbox for several use cases, partnering with banks and fintechs in the region, including Finastra, Temenos and Mambu.  

SAMA recently published an open banking framework and mandated banks to make their account information APIs available this year and payment initiation APIs by March 2023. 

Alina Beleuta, chief growth officer at Salt Edge, said: “We expect the Saudi Arabia market to embrace open banking at a higher pace than other regions. All the needed factors are here: a thoughtful and innovative regulator, a mandate for banks to develop their APIs based on a unique standard, and an increased demand from the market.  

“Fintech apps, corporates, SMEs, merchants, lenders, and all kinds of financial service providers have been showing great interest to implement open banking-powered solutions.  Now the key to succeeding in open banking is to educate every stakeholder about its benefits and help them build as many viable business use cases as possible.” 

Salt Edge has more than 10 years of experience in open banking. It has helped hundreds of banks and financial institutions become compliant with open banking regulations. 

Institutions currently using its solutions include Western Union, Odoo and Habib Bank.  

It has a big presence in Europe and recently helped Curve with compliance to the EU Payment Services Directive (PSD2). 

Saudi Arabia is just one country in the region embracing open banking. Fintech Galaxy recently become the first central bank-regulated open finance platform in the MENA region, when the Dubai-based fintech received a licence from the Central Bank of Bahrain. 

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Josh Poyser Josh Poyser is an editor at FinTech Intel. He has written about fintech for several years and appeared at FinTech Connect 2023 on the 'Unlocking Success: The Art of Fintech PR' panel.