Lean Technologies has received a Major Payment Institution licence for open banking from the Saudi Central Bank – SAMA, becoming the first company authorised to provide open banking services commercially in the Kingdom.
The licence marks the end of a regulatory journey that began in June 2022, when Lean became the first Technical Service Provider admitted to SAMA's open banking sandbox. Since then, the company has connected over 1.1 million bank accounts and analysed more than one billion transactions in Saudi Arabia, working with clients across lending, insurance, investment and government services including Tabby, Tamara, Tawuniya, Abdul Latif Jameel Finance, Salla, HungerStation, Foodics and ByteDance.
The upgrade from sandbox to a Major Payment Institution licence is a significant distinction. Operating under the sandbox, Lean could test and iterate its services under regulatory supervision, but with limitations on scale and commercial scope. A Major PI licence removes those constraints and positions Lean as a regulated infrastructure provider that banks, fintechs and enterprises can build on with the confidence of a permanent regulatory footing.
"When we founded Lean over six years ago, we held a conviction: that open, regulated access to financial data would become the foundation upon which the next generation of Saudi financial services would be built," said Hisham Al-Falih, CEO and Co-Founder. "Receiving this license from SAMA is the moment that validation becomes official. With this license, we have the platform, the partnerships, and the regulatory standing to extend the reach of our infrastructure to thousands of merchants, tens of thousands of SMEs, and millions of end users across the Kingdom."
Among Lean's most prominent clients, Tamara deployed Lean's infrastructure to expand credit access to segments that traditional scoring models struggle to assess, including freelancers, gig workers and individuals with multiple income streams. Abdulmajeed Alsukhan, CEO and Co-Founder of Tamara, said the integration had increased approval rates by more than 32% on consumer financing products while maintaining risk standards.
Founded in 2019 by Hisham Al-Falih, Aditya Sarkar and Ashu Gupta, Lean provides financial data and payment APIs that allow businesses to access customer bank account information and initiate payments through a single platform.
Gupta, who served as CTO, departed Lean roughly nine months ago and went on to found Agnax Labs, a startup building programmable financial infrastructure for AI agents. Agnax was acquired by OrbitronAI in November 2025, with Gupta joining the company as Co-Founder.
Lean is now led by Al-Falih as CEO, Sarkar, Tewfik Cassis as CPO and Mehdi Tazi as COO. The company serves over 350 enterprise clients and has processed more than $2 billion in transaction volume across the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
Lean raised a $67.5 million Series B in November 2024 led by General Catalyst, the first investment by the US growth firm in a Saudi startup, with participation from Bain Capital Ventures, Duquesne Family Office and Arbor Ventures. The round brought total funding to over $100 million.
The Saudi licence comes alongside a separate regulatory milestone in the UAE, where Lean recently received In-Principle Approval from the Central Bank of the UAE under the country's newly introduced Open Finance Framework. The dual-market regulatory position gives Lean licensed or near-licensed status in both of the Gulf's largest fintech markets.
SAMA's open banking framework has been rolled out in phases. Phase one, launched in 2022, focused on Account Information Services (AIS), enabling regulated access to customer financial data. In September 2024, SAMA announced Phase two, covering Payment Initiation Services (PIS), which will allow providers like Lean to enable merchants to accept payments directly from customer bank accounts as an alternative to card payments. The PIS framework is expected to significantly expand the commercial opportunity for licensed open banking providers in the Kingdom.
Lean's principal competitor in the region, Tarabut, has raised over $50 million in total funding. Other open banking players operating under SAMA's framework include Mod5r, Bwatech, Single View and Data Insights.
