Payments giant Mastercard is accelerating its alignment with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 through strategic partnerships with agile fintechs, moving beyond its traditional bank focus to drive financial inclusion and digital transformation across the Kingdom.
Speaking at Money20/20 Middle East in Riyadh, Mohammed Nana, senior vice president of digital partnerships for Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa (EEMEA) at Mastercard, explained that the company’s mission aligns perfectly with the Vision 2030 pillars of innovation, digital transformation, and economic diversification.
“Mastercard’s mission is very, very simple. We want to empower people and most importantly, power economies,” Nana said, noting that the firm leverages its 50 years of a secure, scalable network to achieve this.
As part of this commitment, Mastercard invested in its Mastercard Gateway infrastructure within Saudi Arabia. This on-soil placement ensures all local transactions adhere to Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA) regulations.
The digital transformation focus is also part of a larger, global objective. Mastercard took a pledge in 2020 to bring one billion new people into the digital and financial ecosystem within five years.
“I can tell you, as of today, we’re sitting at around 980 million new consumers,” Nana commented, confirming that these are consumers who were previously unbanked or had no access to formal financial services.
Tiqmo’s agility and rapid growth
Joining Nana was Rinat Ablet, chief revenue officer at Tiqmo, a non-bank, non-telco-led digital wallet that has seen extremely fast growth since its launch in 2024. Tiqmo built its platform to be a financial super-app ecosystem, helping Saudi Arabia’s diverse consumer base, which includes local citizens and a large population of expats.
Tiqmo currently serves approximately 2.5 million users and attributes much of its operational success to the strong foundation provided by the regulator.
Ablet detailed how the partnership with Mastercard allows Tiqmo to focus on the customer experience while trusting the payment giant’s regulatory expertise. “The regulator is very present. You know, as a licensed entity, they give you a very strong foundation of making sure that cybersecurity, compliance, risk, and AML elements are there. And once that is set up, that’s where we get to kind of be on top to innovate,” Ablet explained.
Mastercard’s decision a few years ago to evolve from a monoline business focused primarily on banks into a multi-segmented one was a strategic gamble that opened the door to players like Tiqmo.
“We firmly believe that financial services, the reach in terms of getting financial inclusion and financial independence, goes beyond banks,” Nana said. “It’s players like fintechs, it’s players like telcos who have that reach that can give us access to the end consumer”.
Ablet agreed that the partnership works because the two companies share a common, growth-oriented vision for the future of the Kingdom.
The role of AI and stablecoins in the Future
Looking ahead, both executives see next-generation technology playing a central role. Nana clarified that while Mastercard is still viewed by many as a card business, the reality is the firm is a payment network and a money mover. Mastercard’s next steps include enabling cybersecurity solutions specifically within Saudi Arabia as part of the cyber resilience programme.
He also highlighted the company’s history with advanced technology. “We process close to 150 billion transactions annually. Every single one of those transactions go through our AI risk program, which is able to obviously understand whether a transaction is dodgy or whether it’s actually a real transaction. We’ve been doing that for years,” Nana stated.
For Tiqmo, the immediate impact of AI is backend optimisation. Ablet noted a huge role for AI in streamlining operations around fraud and AML, as well as enhancing customer support.
On the topic of stablecoins, Ablet offered a pragmatic perspective. Tiqmo handles significant volumes of cross-border remittance for expats, and while the end-user is not yet demanding a stablecoin for their personal transactions, the asset class offers significant efficiency for the underlying settlement.
“The demand is for us as an organisation to do the settlement to our partners down the line. That efficiency is definitely required, but the infrastructure has to be established first,” he commented, echoing the industry-wide view that stablecoins’ first utility is in international settlement.
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Open for business
For other fintechs looking to enter the Kingdom and engage with Mastercard, both executives offered encouraging advice.
Ablet advised non-financial technology providers to first assess their value proposition. Nana, meanwhile, reaffirmed Mastercard’s commitment to collaboration.
“Vision 2030 would like 70 per cent of transactions in the kingdom to be done digitally. From a Mastercard perspective, by 2030, we want to ensure that all our transactions are tokenised,” Nana concluded. “We’re looking for partners to help us get to that shared vision.”
Fintechs can connect with Mastercard through the Mastercard Developers platform, which is an API-first platform offering instant access to tools, as well as through programmes like Start Path, Fintech Express, and Mastercard Engage.
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