RIYADH: Global and regional startups continued to attract capital across fintech, healthtech, e-commerce, and proptech, as investors backed platforms focused on financial infrastructure, consumer services, and data-driven solutions.
Saudi Arabia-based fintech Lean Technologies has received a major payment institution license from the Saudi Central Bank, becoming the first licensed open banking provider in the Kingdom.
Founded in 2019 by Hisham Al-Falih, Ashu Gupta, and Aditya Sarkar, the company provides financial infrastructure that enables secure access to banking data across sectors including BNPL, consumer finance, automotive, and investments.
Lean previously operated within SAMA’s regulatory sandbox, where it connected more than one million bank accounts and analyzed over one billion transactions.
The license will allow the company to scale its services to thousands of merchants, tens of thousands of SMEs, and millions of users, expanding access to credit and data-driven financial products.
