OPINION | Saudi Arabia’s Payments Boom Is Historic — And the Window to Shape Africa–Asia Fintech Is Narrowing

By Saeid M.O. Binzagr — 23 November 2025

Saudi Arabia is delivering one of the world’s most remarkable digital payments transformations. mada, SARIE, and SADAD operate at global standards, and domestic adoption continues to rise at extraordinary speed. Everything works for consumers — which is precisely why the next opportunity is not internal, but external: unification lowers the cost for global companies to build on Saudi rails, and that is how influence is created.

Payments infrastructure includes more than rails. It also includes the financial “language” behind them — how refunds, disputes, reconciliation, and metadata are structured. Because Saudi Arabia’s rails evolved independently, these back-end layers differ across systems. Nothing needs fixing; domestically, the system is strong. The opportunity is to make Saudi Arabia the easiest market in the region to integrate with, because global fintechs choose building locations based on integration simplicity, not consumer-facing success.

This matters now because the world’s fastest-growing fintech corridor stretches between Africa and Asia, home to more than 2.1 billion Muslims and massive digital economies. Saudi Arabia sits at the center of this corridor — geographically, culturally, and economically. Consider a simple example: a Nigerian worker sending remittances home, and a Pakistani pilgrim preparing for Umrah, both using fintech products connected through Saudi rails. This is how a shared financial structure creates Saudi-centered connectivity across continents.

Remittances amplify this further. Saudi Arabia sends USD 35–40 billion annually — one of the largest flows globally. Unification does not change these flows; it changes the value the Kingdom captures around them. A single Saudi standard would allow remittance companies, African mobile-money systems, and Asian fintechs to integrate once, shifting more routing, settlement, compliance, and innovation into Saudi Arabia itself.

The UAE offers a regional example: unified structures helped support AED 17 trillion in real-time payments in 2023 and AED 19.9 trillion in 2024. But the UAE’s strength is simplicity; Saudi Arabia’s strength is scale. And global influence belongs to the country that combines both.

Africa, Southeast Asia, and India are rapidly establishing their own digital-payment standards. Once those frameworks solidify, it becomes harder for any external system to shape them. This direction aligns directly with Vision 2030’s goal for Saudi Arabia to become the leading hub connecting three continents through finance, technology, and trade.

Saudi Arabia already leads the region in scale.
The next step is to lead the world in connectivity