Fintech Galaxy Insights ahead of the World Fintech Show

Fintech visionaries will descend on Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh on December 5-6 as the World Fintech Show shines a spotlight on the kingdom’s thriving fintech ecosystem.

The event will connect global fintech innovators with businesses, investors, policy makers, public authorities and partners to redefine and energize financial services by adopting the most impactful technologies.

Wanting to understand more about the significance of this event, and in turn why the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s (KSA’s) fintech ecosystem is so exciting, Fintech Times sat down with Abe Kararproduct manager at Fintech Galaxyand moderator and speaker at The World Fintech Show.

Has previously worked for global financial organizations such as Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Bank of MontrealKarar has over 17 years of experience in the financial industry, across data analysis, digital transformation and open banking/open finance.

After shifting his focus to financial technology, he now works for Fintech Galaxy, a global platform that drives innovation in financial services, drives ecosystem collaboration and facilitates open banking and open finance API integration between financial institutions and fintech companies.

Tell us about Fintech Galaxy

Fintech Galaxy was founded five years ago with a mission to move the needle on financial inclusion through open innovation and open finance. Our core mandate is to drive open innovation within financial services within the MENA region. We offer a secure, reliable and developer-friendly open banking and financial infrastructure that enables seamless integration between financial institutions and fintech, drives collaboration and develops use cases that add value to businesses and end consumers.

I am product manager at Fintech Galaxy, responsible for the design and development of our FINX open financial platform. FINX offers two key offerings: FINX Connect, which is our open financial aggregation platform, and FINX Comply, which is our open financial compliance suite.

We work very closely with clients such as financial institutions, fintechs and regulators, so I advise a lot directly with them to facilitate the adoption of open finance and open banking in the region, and to really drive the open innovation agenda across the board. the stakeholders.

Fintech Galaxy recently became the first central bank-regulated open finance platform in the MENA region. Why was it important to get the AISP license and what can we expect from the company now?

This is a major milestone as there are no other central bank-regulated open finance companies in the region. We worked very closely with Central Bank of Bahrain understanding some of the key needs of the Bahrain market beyond open banking, which is one of the key enablers of this success.

By being a licensed, open financial entity, we can focus on creating broader use cases that provide more integrated value for businesses and consumers. As a Licensed Account Information Services Provider (AISP) with an open finance scope, we use the basic capabilities and flows of data APIs derived from open banking, but extend it beyond payment accounts: the traditional scope of open banking.

We want to introduce other mortgages, loans, pensions, insurances, investments etc. This is only the first step in relation to what we want to achieve with this type of licence. Next come the use cases that take advantage of the extended value of open finance. We also plan to become a licensed PISP, a payment initiation service provider, to bring the movement of money into the use cases, and employ more integrated journeys that combine data APIs, payment APIs and action APIs: Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS ).

I would say that you can expect the Fintech Galaxy to bring new high-quality, safe, secure and scalable technical capabilities that accelerate the roll-out of innovative and value-adding use cases across a wider range of financial products and services for retail users and businesses. I know it will be a long and exciting journey, and I’m sure we’ll be celebrating along the way as we unlock the full potential of open finance in the region.

What are some of the hot topics you’re looking forward to at the World Fintech Show?

As a speaker, I’m really looking forward to discussing how we move from open banking today to open finance tomorrow, and how we can leverage this kind of phenomenon to provide access to responsible credit and make more informed decisions regarding the use and management of money, and of course moving from cash-based transactions to digital transactions.

I am really looking forward to the World Fintech Show because it is one of the main events happening in KSA that attracts many industry leaders and practitioners to share knowledge, experience and views on recent trends. We see KSA becoming the leading innovation hub and a new north star when it comes to open banking in the region.

I know there will be many interesting discussions around moving towards a cashless society, embedded finance, decentralized finance and, of course, open banking and how SAMA is going about the implementation; on that note i would like to thank SAMA for taking a very structured and collaborative approach to bring open banking to the kingdom.

Why is this such an important date on your calendar? What is the significance of the event?

We at Fintech Galaxy are very optimistic about the Saudi market and we take every opportunity to share our experience and knowledge at these events. Recently, for example, we had three more contributions Seamless KSA: myself and two of my other colleagues.

We feel that Saudi is one of the most fertile grounds for innovation, advances in digital infrastructure, strong talent, adoption of digital technologies and a strong visionary government focused on transforming the ecosystem with its FSDP, the Financial Sector Development Programme, and ultimately transforming the Kingdom under Vision 2030.

Indeed, on that last note, one of the focus areas that the Kingdom’s FSDP tackles, which is quite near and dear to our hearts at Fintech Galaxy, is financial inclusion. Our mission at Fintech Galaxy is to rethink the future of inclusive financial services, with the key word here being “inclusive”. However, our experience has taught us that typical approaches do not really produce the expected results. Therefore, we began to focus more on applying lessons from financial citizenship to tackle gaps in financial literacy and financial inclusion.

This event is about contributing knowledge and expertise, meeting different stakeholders in the ecosystem, and identifying opportunities to collaborate with and support them, be it SAMA, Saudi Payments, financial institutions, fintechs or others. We know that the number of ecosystem actors in KSA has increased significantly year on year.

By offering our knowledge and expertise, in combination with our regional open finance platform, FINX, we believe we can help the ecosystem by abstracting technical complexities, facilitating seamless and secure integration with financial institutions in the Kingdom and beyond, allowing fintechs to deliver on SAMA use cases effectively, scale their offerings in other markets quickly, and create value for consumers and businesses.

We feel very strongly about the direction the Kingdom is going, and about contributing to these events
is one of the ways we show our bullish support.

What is economic citizenship?

Originating in Latin America, financial citizenship is about empowering individuals with the right financial knowledge and skills, helping them feel more empowered and entitled to the appropriate financial products and services they need that were originally out of reach. It is the right of every human being to have the right education on the details.

The concept of “citizenship” here is derived from some of the core characteristics of “citizens”, being justice-oriented, personally responsible and participatory. Therefore, each individual’s perspective can affect his/her financial life. This is central to economic citizenship.

It is no longer about the underbanked or unbanked being in a weak position. They are now citizens and as such are empowered with the knowledge and have the right to pursue the products and services they need, access better credit facilities, buy a home, expand their business, afford better education for their children, etc.

It is a very interesting phenomenon and I recommend that readers take a closer look at Brazil and its implementation of open finance, especially how it structured its financial citizenship program around three main pillars: financial education, financial inclusion and financial protection. It is one of those markets that has opened my eyes with its bold achievements and best practices that we can learn from for the MENA region.

What are you looking forward to in 2023?

Economic citizenship is at the top of my list, as the MENA region has high shares of unbanked and underbanked across both consumer and business segments, especially in the Arab countries. So taking financial citizenship over the traditional financial inclusion angle will create a wave of awareness and empowerment for individuals and businesses to go out and get the help they need.

Another fascinating area that I hope we’ll see more of in 2023 is the concept of “integrated” use cases that combine open banking, open finance and BaaS to augment, extend and enhance basic AIS and PIS use cases or even introduce new innovative use cases that solve real challenges more holistically.

I am also very much looking forward to seeing how the various markets will approach VRPs (variable recurring payments) and the various use cases that will be distributed and commercialized. VRPs are considered by many to be the most important advance for open banking and will have a significant impact on the future of payments.

VRPs allow customers to securely connect authorized PISPs to their bank account to make a range of flexible payments on their behalf, within agreed parameters, while removing the need for strong customer authentication for each payment, offering more control and transparency, and enabling swiping (ie, automatic movement of money between accounts). This form of payment is an innovation that can result in a myriad of value-adding use cases, and it will definitely be on my radar next year.

And finally, I’m excited about the potential for how open banking and open finance will facilitate and accelerate collaboration across borders, opening up incredible new opportunities to better serve consumers and businesses who need to manage their finances, including account aggregation and money movement , seamlessly and securely across financial institutions in different jurisdictions.

Find out more about the World Fintech Show and what other topics will be discussed