The Future of Open Banking in Saudi Arabia

Open Banking: the panel highlighted the importance of collaboration between banks, regulators and consumers for a successful open banking implementation

SAMA announced the Open Banking framework which highlights the central bank’s commitment toward better innovation in the financial and banking sector. I saw the announcement while at Seamless KSA, where I had the pleasure of attending presentations, panel discussions, and networking with market innovators.

SAMA’s announcement set the stage for all the great discussions which happened today at Seamless. The overall theme of the payment and FinTech side of the event was dominated by talks of Open Banking, Interoperability, and the path toward a cashless society. Today was eye-opening. It showed the size of opportunities and how much banks and FinTechs in Saudi are planning to capitalize and invest in innovation related to Open Banking and payments.

My key takeaways from today:

• Collaboration between banks, regulators, and FinTechs is key for the successful implementation of Open Banking in Saudi. This message was voiced by most presenters and panelists.

• Banks must understand the value of Open Banking and create customer-centric journeys to realize these values. My favorite quote today was: “It’s not about regulation. It’s about value.”. A customer-focused implementation creates a more cohesive ecosystem that maximizes the value for open banking users.

• Open Banking opens the doors for data sharing between participants and data aggregators. This requires customer education and creates important challenges for privacy, security, and fraud management. Collaboration plays an important role to address these challenges.

• Other than Open Banking, Interoperability, standardization, and better open-loop payments were hot topics among speakers. Opportunities created are limitless. Better micro-financing experience, KYC data aggregation, and enhanced fraud detection were among the benefits highlighted.

Overall, I think today is an important milestone. I am excited about what’s to come in the industry during the next couple of years. If you could not attend today, tomorrow is another great opportunity to attend the conference and explore the exhibition.