Marhaba, fintech friends!

Bringing you another 2-weeks worth of fintech news across MENA.

Here are some of the highlights:

• Mal's $230 million seed round
• The region’s first consumer-initiated open-banking transaction,
• Partnership galore for Mastercard and
• A new digital payments network for Egypt’s non-banking financial sector.

Let's dive right in!

💸 Fundraises and Exits

🇦🇪 Mal, an AI-driven Islamic digital bank, raises $230 million in seed funding, making it the largest seed-stage financing round ever recorded in MENA

AI poised to reshape Islamic finance with cost and efficiency gains: Mal Bank

Abdallah Abu-Sheikh, Founder and CEO of Mal, an Islamic Finance Bank, says Mal will use AI to make banking more cost-effective. Mal is also targeting a launch date of 2026 as they work towards expanding in other regions, trying to get a foothold in a market of 20 billion people. Mal’s CEO also thinks Mal will be break even as Islamic finance has been much more profitable than traditional finance over the past decade.

CNBC

🇧🇭 Flooss, a Bahrain-based Sharia-compliant digital consumer financing platform, secures a $22 million credit facility structured by Shorooq.

💰 Funds

🇸🇦 Red Sea Global partners with Bunat VC to launch a venture fund focused on Saudi-based, early and growth-stage companies that are AI-native or AI-enabled

🇦🇪 MEVP receives a capital commitment from Badir Fund for Developing SMEs for its MEVF IV

🇴🇲🇸🇦🇺🇸 Bank Muscat (Oman) and Derayah Financial (Saudi) participate in Alpaca's $150 million Series D round.

🚀 Partnerships & Product Launches

🇦🇪 Zand fully integrates the XDC Network, an enterprise-grade blockchain platform, to allow corporate and institutional clients to custody assets on the network through the bank's digital asset custody service

🇪🇬 MoneyHash partners with open banking infrastructure provider, Spare, to allow merchants in the UAE to offer a Pay-by-Bank option

🇦🇪 botim money partners with Mastercard, allowing its users to send money from the UAE to more than 150 countries

🇪🇬 Mastercard provides ABK-Egypt with digital payment solutions

🇦🇪 Lean Technologies, open banking infrastructure provider, and Ziina, a payment platform, launch the country's first customer-initiated Open Finance payment

From Framework to Reality: Ziina & Lean Bring Open Finance Payments to Life - Lean Tech

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🇦🇪 Mastercard, Tappy Technologies, Thales and FAB launch the Fitness Payment Ring

🇴🇲 Thawani Pay partners with Network International, allowing the latter to provide credit card processing services

🇦🇪 Emirates NBD issues AED 1 billion in 3-year fixed-rate digitally native note - the first AED-denominated digital bond and largest public digital bond in the MENA region

🇦🇪 NEO PAY partners with Wio Bank to introduce a PoS lending solution for SME merchants across the UAE

🇪🇬 Contact partners with Al Safy Group to develop a financing platform for consumer finance.

🏛 Licensing & Regulations

🇦🇪 The Dubai Financial Services Authority updates its regulatory framework for crypto tokens, including a shift from a DFSA-led suitability assessment to firm-led process

🇪🇬 Granite receives its FRA license to launch Egypt's first fully digital money market account

🇪🇬 The FRA launches the first integrated digital payment network for the non-banking financial sector

🇪🇬 The CBE grants Arab Financial Services a SoftPOS license to introduce tap-to-phone payment solutions nationwide

🇲🇦 Morocco's Bank Al-Maghrib publishes a new fintech regulatory guide

🇪🇬 Egypt's FRA grants Orion Consumer Finance (algo) a consumer finance license

🇪🇬 Egypt's FRA grants EGX its first license to operate a futures exchange for derivatives on securities listed in the Egyptian market.

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 ✌🏼