Paymentology Bets Big on Riyadh: Accelerating Saudi Arabia’s Fintech Future

1. An introduction on Paymenology’s local presence in KSA, UAE and ME region, since when, and what is the size of personnel?

- At Paymentology, we provide the next-generation issuer-processing technology that powers modern card and payment programmes, from prepaid and debit through to credit and virtual, across both global and local schemes.

With that foundation, we entered the Saudi market in 2020, working closely with local financial institutions and fintechs. In September 2025, we took a significant step forward by establishing our legal entity in Riyadh. Building on successful collaborations with fintech leaders like Tabby and D360, we have proudly established our presence in the Kingdom, bringing world-class card issuing and payment processing to the heart of Saudi Arabia’s fintech revolution. With our commercial registration now in place, we are significantly investing through local hiring and cloud infrastructure development, reinforcing our dedication to nurturing Saudi talent and supporting Vision 2030 with faster, smarter, next-generation payment innovation.

In the wider MENA region, we entered the UAE in 2018, and serve leading organisations such as Wio Bank and Mamo, among others, and we also have a presence in Jordan. To support our growth in the UAE, we expanded our Dubai office earlier this year, creating a larger regional hub for delivery, client collaboration, and innovation.

2. Why Saudi presence? Type of infrastructure – How paymentology is supporting Government and Financial institutions efficiency?

- Saudi Arabia is one of the most exciting markets in the world for financial innovation. Vision 2030 has created a powerful and unifying agenda, giving the entire country — from regulators to banks, fintechs and entrepreneurs — a single collective goal to work toward. That clarity of direction is, quite frankly, genius, and it is accelerating the pace of transformation in payments and financial services.

In Saudi, building trust means being physically present, connecting in person, listening carefully, and showing a long-term commitment. That is why we are expanding our team locally across leadership, engineering, compliance, client success and operations, and embedding ourselves in the Kingdom’s ecosystem.

From an infrastructure perspective, we are investing heavily to ensure resilience and compliance. We are already running locally on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and will soon expand to Google Cloud Platform (GCP), ensuring we continue to meet data residency requirements and providing world-class performance. Our platform integrates directly with mada and domestic switches, which is critical for transaction routing and interoperability.

This means that banks and fintechs can rely on us to shorten time-to-market, reduce operational complexity, and innovate quickly while staying fully aligned with SAMA’s requirements. In practice, we help financial institutions operate more efficiently, launch new products faster, and deliver world-class payment experiences to their customers, all in line with Vision 2030’s ambition to create a cashless, digital-first economy.

3. Latest Product offerings and innovations

- On the product side, our cloud-first issuer processing platform is built to give digital banks and fintechs, the agility they need to compete and scale. Solutions like PayCredit, our innovative credit-ledger capability, and PayoCard, our mobile-first card management platform, are helping our clients to launch differentiated products quickly. We have also added advanced tokenisation capabilities, enabling secure digital cards to be embedded across wallets, wearables, and other emerging channels, all while staying fully compliant with regional requirements such as data sovereignty.

In Saudi Arabia, as well as supporting success stories such as D360 and Tabby, a key milestone recently was signing our strategic MOU with Enjaz, to bring next-generation card products to market, including prepaid, debit, and virtual cards integrated with remittance services. Looking more broadly across the Middle East region, we are also proud to be among the first processors certified for Jaywan, the UAE’s national domestic card scheme. This positions us to help banks and fintechs issue cards that align with national payment strategies, while still providing the global acceptance that customers expect.

4. Sharing Paymentology’s knowledge and bringing it for the best benefit of companies, businesses and entrepreneurs in ME

- Payments can be complex, and we believe that sharing knowledge is just as important as providing technology. That’s why we created the Issuer Academy, a global learning platform where we run workshops, masterclasses, and podcast episodes to demystify payment innovation.

At Money20/20 Middle East this year, we hosted two Issuer Academy podcast sessions that reflected both Saudi ambition and regional priorities. The first, in partnership with Enjaz, explored why being built in Saudi for the world is a powerful vision for exporting digital excellence globally. The second, with Mastercard, focused on The Saudi Fintech Enablement Playbook, a discussion on the frameworks, infrastructure and collaboration that are helping local innovators scale responsibly.

These knowledge sharing sessions are a good example of our approach: as a company that operates in 50+ countries, we bring a global perspective, but we localise it to the realities of each market. In the Middle East, that means translating best practice from around the world into insights that are relevant for Saudi and regional entrepreneurs, banks and fintechs, helping them navigate complexity, accelerate innovation, and ultimately deliver better products to their customers.

5. Cashless societies advantages

- A cashless economy lowers costs, increases transparency, and makes payments faster and more secure. Most importantly, it drives inclusion, giving SMEs and underbanked consumers access to digital services.

Saudi Arabia has moved at remarkable speed: more than a third of smartphone users now rely on digital wallets, contactless payments have surged from 4% of in-store transactions in 2017 to 98% in 2024, and instant transfers via Sarie are part of daily life. The Kingdom has already reached 79% digital retail transactions, a goal first set for 2030, achieved six years early. With one of the youngest, most tech-savvy populations in the world, Saudi is setting the pace for the GCC and beyond.