Market size
There is compelling macroeconomics, clear top-down Government ambitions for a cashless economy and fintech growth, accompanied by supportive infrastructure and regulatory reform.
Market Size and Growth Projections
Fintech has seen a rapid advancement in Saudi Arabia, particularly in the last 5 years since the launch of the Saudi Vision 2030. The Saudi Fintech industry’s market size was valued at $20 billion USD in 2019, and is expected to reach $33 billion USD by 2023. Though the pandemic posed many challenges to companies across sectors, there is some evidence of the pandemic accelerating the uptake of digital payments and other fintech products and services, potentially accelerating the adoption of fintech in the Kingdom.
From the onset of monitoring fintech activity in the Kingdom in 2018, actively operating fintechs in the Kingdom (which includes fintechs with a standard trade license, fintech license or a testing license) has increased from 10 players in 2018 to 82 players by the end of July 2021, which is a cumulative annual growth rate of 102%. Replicating the growth of Fintech in global markets, the largest and most crowded fintech segment is Digital Payments & Currency Exchanges, comprising over one- third (35%) of all fintech players in the market; since 2018, this segment has a cumulative annual growth rate of 60%. The next largest fintech segments are Business Tools & Data Aggregators and Lending & Finance, with 15 and 14 fintech players in each of these categories respectively.
3 YEAR GROWTH OF ACTIVELY OPERATING FINTECHS IN KSA BY SEGMENT
The fastest growing fintech segment has been Business Tools & Data Aggregators (2018-2021 CAGR: 116%) which had 3 players in 2018 and grew to 14 in 2.5 years; this Fintech segment generally does not require regulatory approval for a specific fintech license, and as such, has a much lower barrier to entry. The second fastest growing fintech segment is Private Fundraising (CAGR: 100%; growing from 2 players in 2018 to 8 players by the end of H1 2021), and Insurance (CAGR: 100%; growing from 2 players in 2019 to 4 players today). There were only 2 segments that saw a decrease in market players between 2018 to 2021: the Banking and Banking Infrastructure segment which shrank from 3 players in 2018 to only 1 player in 2021, mostly due to reclassifying the companies in other segments. The second shrinking segment was a niche segment of Healthcare Financing (graphed as “other” in 2018), which went from 1 to 0 – players in the same period.
ACTIVELY OPERATING FINTECHS IN SAUDI ARABIA BY SEGMENT (JULY 2021)
* Information taken from the special report "An ultimate guide to Fintech in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia", Entrepreneur Middle/East.
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