Marhaba, fintech friends!

Arabic AI is coming into its own, with the help of a start-up born and bred in Egypt: Intella. Fresh off an oversubscribed $12.5 million Series A led by Prosus, the speech intelligence platform announced a partnership with Visa this week.

Intella is building Arabic-first conversational AI that understands the region as it is spoken, processing 25+ dialects with a 95.7% speech-to-text accuracy rate. That's a number that global tech has yet to match.

The implications for, and the opportunity in financial services are hard to overstate. With a young and highly digital population of 500 million people, the Arab world represents one of the fastest-growing linguistic markets underserved by localized AI. Egypt (with 119 million people) and Saudi Arabia (with 32 million people) are sizable consumer markets where people interact in Arabic first.

For financial institutions, Arabic-first conversational AI unlocks a whole new layer of service delivery and risk management in a considerable, largely underserved segment. From call center audits to fraud detection, from product design to financial inclusion, context-aware AI is what makes large-scale, digital-first financial services workable in these markets.

Of course, it wasn’t the only headline this week. From fundraises to partnerships to regulatory updates, here’s what else moved in MENA fintech.

💸 Fundraises and Exits

🇸🇦 erad, Riyadh-based alternative SME financing platform, raises $33 million in debt financing to scale its operations across Saudi and the UAE

🇸🇦 Bwatech, a Saudi fintech focused on corporate financial solutions, secures $16 million in a funding round led by Sharaka Financial

🇸🇦 Moneymoon, Saudi-based P2P lending platform, raises $2.9 million in pre-series A funding led by Core Vision

🇸🇦 Sindbad.Tech, Saudi roboadvisory start-up, closes a $4.8 million seed funding round

🇸🇦 ByNow, Saudi-based B2B BNPL platform, receives $1.2 million in funding from Merak Capital

🇸🇦 OXO, Saudi POS start-up, is acquired by SILQFI, and relaunched as Omni.

💰 Funds

🇦🇪 Shorooq, an Abu-Dhabi-based investment firm partners, and global AI and big data analytics company, Presight, launch a global AI innovation fund to invest $100 million in emerging AI technologies across fintech, smart cities, energy, among other sectors.

🚀 Partnerships & Product Launches

Intella, Egypt-based deep tech company specialized in Arabic-first speech intelligence, partners with Visa to integrate conversational AI for financial institutions across MENA

Exciting news! 🚀 We are proud to announce a strategic partnership between intella and Visa to elevate intellaCX and redefine customer experience across the MENA region. This collaboration marks a… | intella

Exciting news! 🚀 We are proud to announce a strategic partnership between intella and Visa to elevate intellaCX and redefine customer experience across the MENA region. This collaboration marks a new chapter in delivering smarter, more seamless, and impactful experiences for customers.

LinkedInintella

Mastercard signs an MoU with Syria’s Central Bank to develop the country’s digital payment capabilities

Bybit collaborates with QNB Group and DMZ Finance to introduce QCDT, a tokenized money market fund, onto Bybit’s platform as a collateral asset

TerraPay and D360 come together to support inbound money transfers into Saudi, across use cases, including P2P, C2B, B2C and B2B

Saudi National Bank plans to launch a POS lending solution for SMEs, powered by open banking platform Tarabut and payment solutions provider, Geidea

Online payment gateway Telr partners with cash flow optimization solution, Kema, to help merchants manage payments and cash more efficiently 

Combining local market knowledge and global expertise, the UAE’s Meedaf and Australia’s InDebted partner to bring a better debt resolution experience to the GCC

barq, a Saudi digital payments provider, integrates iPiD Validate, a payee verification tool designed for fraud prevention

valU introduces its digital onboarding feature on MENA’s largest digital marketplace, noon

HyperPay signs partnership agreements with Mastercard to issue business cards tailored to SMEs, and with Mozn to improve fraud prevention and compliance across digital transactions

Wamid, tech arm of Saudi’s Tadawul Group, partners with STV to jointly develop an electronic trading platform for private assets in Saudi.

🏛 Licensing & Regulations

Dubai-based fintech, Kamel Pay, receives In-Principle Approval from the Central Bank of the UAE to provide payroll and business payment services across the country

The UAE’s Ministry of Finance signs the Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement on the Automatic Exchange of Information under the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework.

Thank you for tuning in!

If you have feedback on this edition of This Week in Fintech MENA, please reach out on LinkedIn.

Until next week,

Salam ✌🏼