Fundraising

Out of the 30 fintechs that successfully raised capital, 15 companies (50%) fully disclosed information on all rounds of funding; 7 fintechs (23%) only partially disclosed information on funds raised, and the remaining 8 fintechs that disclosed fundraising activity (27%) did not disclose any details about the amount of funds raised. It is prudent to note that the fundraising analysis conducted within this report is based only on publicly available data. Thirty-seven percent of all Fintechs operating in Saudi Arabia (30 out of 82 Fintech Companies) today have successfully gone through at least one round of external fundraising. Fourteen fintechs (47% of those that have fundraised) have successfully completed multiple rounds of external fundraising (2 or more).

Fintechs operating in Saudi have raised over $1 Billion USD in fundraising in the past 12 years (this figure takes into account fundraising raised by both Saudi-born fintechs as well as international Fintechs setting up operations in Saudi Arabia). Over $787 million USD of capital has been externally fundraised by Saudi-born and raised fintechs (based on public disclosure). The years 2018, 2020 and 2021 were the strongest fundraising years to date, with fundraised values in those years accounting for 83% of all fintech-related fundraising raised in the Kingdom to date. Funding is relatively equally disbursed between Corporate Funding (US $200 million), Series A (US $185 million) and Series B (US $152 million). Payments and Currency Exchange Fintechs received the most funding to date, having raised more than $562 million (equating to more than 55% of all funding raised by Fintechs in Saudi); this is to be expected as Payments is the most mature fintech vertical established in the Kingdom.

TOTAL FUNDRAISING RAISED BY FINTECHS OPERATING IN THE KINGDOM (USD MILLION)

The largest funding segment is fundraising rounds between ‘$1 million USD to under $10 million USD’, which comprised 56% of all fundraising amounts; this was followed by seed stage and series A funding below $1 million (16%), and finally followed by the ‘$20mn to under $50 million USD’ category (12%).

SAUDI FINTECH FUNDRAISING ROUND DEAL SIZE ANALYSIS

The largest fundraised amount to date was by Geidea, the POS terminals and solutions market leader in Saudi, in 2018, when the Fintech player was acquired for $268 million USD by a Private Equity Fund (See page 35 for a Case Study on Geidea). In late 2020, the Kingdom’s first unicorn (a term used to describe a start-up to be valued at over $1 billion USD) was announced, when STCpay, the Kingdom’s leading digital wallet, announced that it had sold a 15% stake in the company to Western Union for a $200 million USD investment. Beehive and Tabby, both UAE-born lending and finance apps that opened operations in Saudi Arabia, experienced the most rounds of funding each having raised funds on 5 separate occasions spanning seed stage to Series B, with debt-financing and grants as bridges in between. The median fundraised amount in one fundraising round by those 32 fintechs (operating in Saudi Arabia) that have successfully raised capital was $5,000,000 USD.

Availability of Fintech Funding in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Venture Capital funding grew 65% year- on-year to reach a record amount of SAR 650 million (equivalent to US $173 million) in the first half of 2021; this accounted for 14% of VC funding across the whole of the Middle East and North Africa region. Fintech funding accounted for almost a quarter of all transactions, showing a growth of 1700% more capital year-on-year. In the same period, e-commerce funding declined by 54% in the Kingdom.

Traditional lenders have also been increasing their financing of start-ups and small businesses. Credit facilities provided to micro, small and medium sized business grew 40% from Q1 2020 to Q1 2021. Banks provided the lions share of credit, 93% of the total SAR 188.4 billion (equivalent to US $50.2 billion).

* Information taken from the special report "An ultimate guide to Fintech in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia", Entrepreneur Middle/East.

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