Saudi Arabia and Middle East Payments Market 2026: Cash Is Already Gone. Where Can a Payments Startup Still Win?

Most payments pitches for the Middle East still open with the same slide: a cash-heavy region, about to go digital. In Saudi Arabia, that slide is out of date. The shift has mostly happened already, and it was driven by the central bank, the national debit scheme and the banks. A founder who builds for "the move away from cash" is entering a market that has already moved.

This piece looks at what the official data actually shows, so you can decide where a new product still has room. Every number comes from a source you can check: the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA), the World Bank Global Findex, the BIS payments statistics and the central banks of the region.

What the data shows: Saudi Arabia is already cashless at the till

Electronic payments are the norm. Electronic payments made up 85% of retail payments in Saudi Arabia in 2025 (SAMA, 2025), up from 79% in the 2023–2024 reporting window (Financial Sector Development Program, 2024). The country processed 14.6 billion electronic payment transactions in 2025 (SAMA, 2025). BIS data puts it at 328.52 cashless payments per inhabitant in 2024 (BIS CPMI, 2024).

The phone has replaced the plastic card at the till. Customers made 6.27 billion point-of-sale payments with a mobile device (NFC) in 2025 (SAMA Monthly Statistical Bulletin, 2025). The terminal network keeps growing: 1,981,111 POS terminals in 2024 (BIS CPMI, 2024) and 2,472,104 by August 2026 (SAMA, 2026). Between 2021 and 2023 the national POS network grew by 72% (SAMA Payments Usage Study, 2023).

Payments are small and mostly debit. The average debit card payment was USD 15.46 in 2024, against USD 35.08 for a credit card payment (BIS CPMI, 2024). Saudis hold 1.42 debit cards per person and 0.11 credit cards (BIS CPMI, 2024). Even at the smallest ticket size the incumbents are hard to dislodge: e-wallets had a 14% share of one-off consumer payments under SAR 50 (SAMA Payments Usage Study, 2023).

Online is growing fast on the same rails. E-commerce payments made with mada, the national debit scheme, reached SAR 69.3 billion in Q1 2025, 56% more than a year earlier, with an average ticket of SAR 187 (SAMA via WAM, 2025). Debit cards were the payment method for half of Saudi e-commerce (SAMA Payments Usage Study, 2023).

Instant bank transfers are cheap. Transactions on sarie, the instant payments system, grew from 176 million in 2021 to 437 million in 2023. A sarie transfer costs SAR 0.50 for amounts up to SAR 500 and SAR 1 for SAR 500–20,000, against SAR 7 for a same-day RTGS transfer (SAMA Payments Usage Study, 2023). If your product moves money between accounts, the state rail sets a very low price ceiling.

Who is still underserved

The headline adoption numbers hide clear gaps between groups. Global Findex 2024 gives the breakdown:

• Overall: 64.2% of adults made a digital payment to a merchant. Among adults aged 25+ the figure is 66.7%; among 15–24 year-olds it is 53.9% (World Bank Findex, 2024).
• Women: 59.3% made a digital merchant payment, against 66.9% of men. Paying bills by phone or online: 42.00% of women, against 58.89% of men (World Bank Findex, 2024).
• Young adults: only 32.21% of 15–24 year-olds paid bills by phone or online, against 52.88% of all adults (World Bank Findex, 2024).
• Credit: only 30.13% of adults own a credit card; 34.17% of the richest 60% and 24.08% of the poorest 40% (World Bank Findex, 2024).
• Those not paying digitally in store: 18.17% of adults did not pay in a shop by phone or card (World Bank Findex, 2024).

The pattern is clear. Paying at the till is solved for most people. Credit, bill payment, and services for young adults and women are much less developed.

The supply side: a crowded field of licensed players

The number of fintech companies in Saudi Arabia went from 14 in 2020 to 261 in 2024 (FSDP Annual Report, 2024). By 2024, 138 fintechs held a SAMA licence, 52 a Capital Market Authority licence and 14 an Insurance Authority licence (FSDP Annual Report, 2024). In July 2026 the count of licensed payment companies reached 33, when SAMA licensed a payment account information provider (SPA, 2026).

The incumbents are profitable and efficient. Saudi banks posted a return on equity of 14.98% and a cost-to-income ratio of 30.15% in 2025 (IMF Financial Soundness Indicators, 2025). A startup that tries to beat them on basic card acceptance or transfers is competing with low-cost players that already own the customer.

What this means for a product

Where the money is not. Plain card acceptance and person-to-person transfers. Between mada, phone wallets and sarie pricing, there is little margin left to win on the core transaction.

Where the room is.

1. Credit at the point of sale, for SMEs and consumers. Only 30.13% of adults own a credit card (World Bank Findex, 2024). SMEs receive 11.4% of bank credit, but 20.5% of credit from finance companies (SAMA, Q2 2026). Non-bank lenders already serve small businesses more than banks do, measured by the share of their portfolios. That suggests a gap a licensed lending or embedded-finance product can work in.
2. Open banking products. The SAMA Open Banking Framework has been in force for account information since November 2022 and for payment initiation since September 2024. Since March 2026, SAMA licenses fintechs to provide open banking services after the sandbox phase. At the SAMA Open Banking Forum in September 2026, bank readiness for payment initiation was still listed as a next-stage priority (SAMA rules, verified). This means the rules exist, but the plumbing is not finished. It is an early window, and the timing is uncertain.
3. Payroll and wage compliance. Under the Wage Protection System, companies with fewer than 30 employees must reach 90% payroll compliance and larger ones 95%, measured against payroll registered with GOSI. Otherwise the Mudad platform raises an alert (WPS rules, verified). Every private employer has to pay wages through banks and prove it. That makes payroll a regulatory need, not a nice-to-have.
4. Remittances. Sending money from Saudi Arabia cost 4.52% of the amount on average in 2023 (World Bank, 2023). That is the price a cheaper corridor competes against.

The rest of the region is a different market

Do not assume the Saudi numbers hold elsewhere in MENA. Account ownership in 2024 was 82.32% in Bahrain and 78.84% in Saudi Arabia, but 46.46% in Jordan, 44.39% in Morocco and 23.04% in Lebanon. Only 12.5% of adults in Jordan, 9.6% in Morocco and 7.0% in Algeria made a digital merchant payment (World Bank Findex, 2024).

In Egypt the leading rail is the mobile wallet: 60 million registered wallets in 2025 (Central Bank of Egypt, 2025), with mobile money transactions worth 19.44% of GDP in 2024 (IMF FAS, 2024). In the UAE, 16 stored value facility (e-wallet) providers were licensed in 2025 (Central Bank of the UAE, 2025).

Pricing is regulated in places. Jordan caps the merchant discount rate for retail and wholesale merchants at 1.25%, sets a floor of 0.70% for non-government, non-fuel merchants and fixes interchange at 0.50% (Central Bank of Jordan, 2026). Read the local central bank circulars before you model revenue as a percentage of payment value.

So the region splits in two. In the Gulf, the work is in credit, open banking and payroll on top of digital rails. In North Africa and the Levant, the task is still getting people onto digital rails at all.

What the data does not tell you

• Merchant fees in Saudi Arabia. We do not yet have a verified official figure for the merchant discount rate on mada or on international cards in Saudi Arabia. Without it you cannot model acquiring revenue from official data.
• Wallet market shares. The data shows how many phone payments are made, not how they split between wallet providers.
• BNPL. The survey figures on buy-now-pay-later usage in Saudi Arabia that we hold come from vendors, without disclosed methodology. We did not use them here.
• Timing. Gaps in Findex are a snapshot from 2024. Bank readiness for payment initiation is an official goal, not a delivered service. The window can close or open faster than the data shows.

The short version: do not pitch Saudi investors on replacing cash. Show which group or which money flow (credit, payroll, open banking, remittances) the current rails leave behind, and what your product earns on each transaction once sarie and mada set the floor.