Lean Technologies Scales Pay by Bank as UAE Open Finance Goes Live
Lean Technologies has offered account-to-account (A2A) payments in the UAE since 2022, serving clients including e&, Careem, DAMAC and OKX. It has processed billions of dollars in transactions and helped businesses save more than $100 million in card fees. With the launch of the Open Finance framework, the model has become part of regulated, nationwide standard infrastructure.
Lean announced an expansion of Pay by Bank on May 6, 2026, integrating account funding, payment collection, checkout and subscription payments. On June 25, it also partnered with licensed fintech platform Ziina to launch the UAE's first one-tap bank-payment service. Users need to link a bank account only once and can then top up their wallets with one tap, without re-entering credentials or being redirected to a bank website.
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The history behind this eventLean Technologies Secures Saudi Arabia’s First Open Banking License
Open banking allows customers, with their consent, to securely share banking data with regulated providers for lending, wealth management and payment services. Founded in 2019, Lean Technologies previously participated in the Saudi Central Bank's regulatory sandbox and completed a $67.5 million Series B funding round in November 2024. The formal issuance of a license marks the framework's transition from testing to routine regulation.
The Saudi Central Bank, or SAMA, announced the launch of licensing for open banking providers on March 26, 2026. Lean Technologies said on March 27 that it had obtained the country's first major payment institution license, allowing it to provide account information services. During its time in the sandbox, the company connected more than 1 million bank accounts and analyzed more than 1 billion transactions. It can now expand its services to thousands of merchants, tens of thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises, and millions of users.
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