Lean and Ziina launch one-tap Pay by Bank in the UAE

Published: 2026-06-28T04:15:00.000Z

The unglamorous problem of topping up a digital wallet might not sound like the frontier of financial innovation, but it is where the next phase of open banking is being proven out in the UAE. Lean Technologies and Ziina have launched the country's first one-tap Pay by Bank experience under the Open Finance framework.

The unglamorous problem of topping up a digital wallet might not sound like the frontier of financial innovation, but it is exactly where the next phase of open banking is being proven out in the UAE. Lean Technologies and Ziina have launched what they describe as the country's first one-tap Pay by Bank experience under the Central Bank's Open Finance framework, letting users link their bank account once and then fund their wallet later with a single tap. No re-entering login details, no being bounced over to a clunky bank portal, just a recurring, low friction payment that finally behaves the way modern consumer apps have trained people to expect. The technical step forward is more meaningful than it first appears. Pay by Bank, which moves money directly from a bank account rather than through a card network, has been available in the UAE for a while, but only as one off instant payments that required the user to authorize every single transaction. The new capability, built on Lean's Deposits product, retains a customer's consent to use their bank account for up to 12 months, which means recurring payments can happen without forcing re-authentication each time, while still complying with the security and consent rules the Central Bank mandates. Lean's vice president of sales Omar Hamada framed it as showing that the infrastructure can support the kind of low effort, repeatable payments that make a method part of how people actually pay every day, calling this the first real example of that shift. For Ziina, the logic is about removing friction from one of its most common actions. The company, a Central Bank licensed fintech founded in 2020 by Faisal, Sarah and Talal Toukan, serves more than 260,000 consumers and businesses, and funding a wallet is something its users do constantly. Talal Toukan, the co-founder and head of engineering, made the point that people now expect financial products to feel as simple as the best consumer technology they use, and that making wallet top-ups faster was a natural next step. This launch also builds directly on an earlier milestone, since in January 2026 Ziina became the first entity in the UAE to execute a live customer-initiated Open Finance payment, again in partnership with Lean. The recurring experience is effectively the second phase of that collaboration. The strategic backdrop is the Central Bank's broader Financial Infrastructure Transformation program, which has been steadily building the regulated rails for open finance across the country. Lean has played a foundational role in that, working with regulators, banks and fintech's to enable secure data and payment connectivity, and the company says its platform is built for national scale adoption. As that infrastructure matures, the competitive pressure between fintech's and traditional banks intensifies, since account-to-account payments threaten the fees and friction that card networks have long relied on. The regional read fits the wider MENA trajectory. Open finance is moving from basic payment initiation toward genuinely seamless, everyday experiences, and the UAE is positioning itself at the front of that shift alongside Saudi Arabia, where Lean also operates as a licensed open banking provider. A one-tap wallet top-up is a small thing on its own, but it signals that the region's open finance ecosystem is maturing from regulatory milestone into something consumers will actually use without thinking about it.