Comprehensive coverage and updates on التقنية المالية across the MENA tech ecosystem.
A round that size without an institutional lead is unusual. So is the product: financing, tokenisation and trading tools aimed at the part of the market where private companies and their investors have the least infrastructure.
Nayla raised about $18m in a mix of equity and debt at LEAP. The more interesting fact is where the company came from: it is the first business built inside Sanabil Studio to close an institutional round.
A crypto firm entering the UAE chooses between VARA, the DFSA and ADGM, with federal regulators above them. Regulatory competition has produced both responsiveness and specialisation.
The UAE's framework provides an API Hub, a trust framework and shared infrastructure, and extends beyond banking to a wider set of financial products. CBD, FAB and ADIB are among the banks live.
The Saudi Central Bank began licensing open banking providers in March 2026 after the sandbox phase closed. The framework now covers both account information and payment initiation.
VARA was established in 2022 as the world's first dedicated virtual asset regulator. It now authorises seven categories of activity and more than twenty licensed entities.
$32bn in 2024, approaching $50bn by 2027. The growth is real and the definitions behind regional e-commerce figures deserve more scrutiny than they get.
Fintech took 67% of Saudi venture funding and built Bahrain's ecosystem. In both cases the differentiator was a licensing route, not a product.
Bahrain built a $1.6bn ecosystem by regulating first. Every neighbour now has a sandbox, and the advantage that produced 759% growth is no longer scarce.
More than 177 fintechs and payment providers now operate across over 14 subsectors in Egypt, a more than fivefold increase — built on a gap between banking and mobile penetration.