Canada-based Open Banking company Salt Edge has expanded to Saudi Arabia to augment banks and FIs with innovative solutions and aid the Kingdom’s path towards digitalisation. The Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) sees Open Banking as pivotal in developing the Kingdom’s financial sector further and supporting financial inclusion in the country.

On 2 November 2022, SAMA published the Open Banking Framework and mandated banks to make their account information APIs available by the end of 2022, and the payment initiation APIs by March 2023. With the deadlines right around the corner, Salt Edge’s Open Banking Compliance solution helps KSA banks to become compliant in 3 months only. Salt Edge has already developed the sandboxes for KSA banks to offer an easy way to show how it starts.

Previous Open Banking deployments by Salt Edge Salt Edge is a leading Open Banking services provider with 10 years of delivering financial technology solutions for banks, credit unions, lenders, accounting companies, fintechs, and anyone who wants to leverage Open Banking. The company has gained valuable expertise in Europe, where Open Banking was largely adopted by the market back in 2019, and Salt Edge has helped banks and financial institutions become compliant with Open Banking regulatory requirements and get connectivity to 5,000 bank channels. Among the institutions that are successfully using Salt Edge’s Open Banking solutions are Western Union, Odoo, Guaranty Trust Bank, Pleo, Byblos Bank, Ahli Bank, Habib Bank, and many others.

How Open Banking will benefit the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Understanding the importance of the Open Banking phenomenon in the KSA, Salt Edge is rolling out a set of Open Banking solutions on the Saudi market, which will help financial institutions enable consumers to share their transactional data and initiate payments via trusted fintechs for better financial outcomes. Salt Edge has built partnerships in the region with Finastra, Temenos, Mambu, Spire, Thought Machine, Tuum, ebankIT, and others, striving to help financial institutions innovate, grow, and deliver customer value fast. The company expects the Saudi Arabia market to embrace Open Banking at a higher pace than other regions.

All the needed factors are there: 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.

Keeping security as a main focus ISO 27001 certified and conformant with SAMA’s Cyber Security Framework, Salt Edge employs international security measures to ensure stable and reliable connections between financial institutions and their customers. The company has onboarded onto SAMA’s Open Banking Lab and is in process of applying to SAMA’s regulatory sandbox for several use cases, partnering with both banks and fintechs in the region. For more information about Salt Edge, please check out the company profile in The Paypers Company Database.

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