Building Strong Collaborations

ALINA BELEUTA, CHIEF GROWTH OFFICER AT SALT EDGE

“We expect the Saudi Arabian market to embrace open banking at a higher pace than other countries. 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.”

Beleuta states that there is an air of excitement and anticipation about open banking in Saudi Arabia. In part, this is because SAMA is generating commercial interest among banks.

“Saudi differs from the UK, Europe, and other worldwide open banking adopters in its approach of providing use cases from early in the implementation of open banking. An interesting aspect of Saudi banks is that regulatory compliance does not make up their entire focus. Aside from this, many banks have already set strategies for how to go beyond it and build premium APIs and banking-as-a-service (BaaS) on top of their compliance infrastructure.

“At the moment, local banks in Saudi face a challenge when it comes to sourcing talent to fill open banking roles. Open banking in Saudi is extremely new and it requires a lot of time for onboarding, for understanding not only the technicality but the business view on it, and this is a struggle for the local banks.

“It’s also an opportunity for people in other countries, like Europe and the UK to share their experience with the banks here. In view of their extensively gained experience, international vendors can create a path that helps prevent and eliminate obstacles from the get-go. And this is what the banks are doing actually – they are targeting both local and international talents to develop some frameworks and trying to understand the business side, like how do you monetise it? What kind of use cases will be relevant for their clients, for their products?”

ALINA BELEUTA CHIEF GROWTH OFFICER AT SALT EDGE

COMPANY INFO

Salt Edge is a leader in building open banking API solutions that assist financial institutions in the Middle East and globally to become open banking compliant, monetise the open banking technology, and optimise business processes including lending, accounting, invoicing, KYC. ISO 27001 certified and open banking licensed in the UK, the company employs the highest international security measures.

VISIT: https://openbankingsaudi.saltedge.com

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