What happened: Audax partners with Jeel, the digital innovation arm of Riyad Bank, to enable local banks to launch digital banks, BaaS, super apps, and open banking solutions (Finextra). Audax is headquartered in Singapore and is a subsidiary of Standard Chartered. Saudi Arabia’s financial service sector is going through a massive transformation as part of the Vision 2030 activities.
My comment: Audax’s journey started under the brand Standard Chartered Nexus where it enabled its owner, Standard Chartered, to become the first bank in Asia to offer banking-as-a-service products, including the partnership with Indonesian commerce platform Bukalapak (Bukalapak). After this success, Standard Chartered decided to rebrand the unit into Audax and offer the services to other banks. It seems logical for Riyad Bank to partner with a provider like Audax, as it enables them to gain massive insights and the necessary tech to offer such solutions.
Unlike half of my LinkedIn connections, I haven’t been to Saudi Arabia’s event “24 Fintech” this year and have only limited knowledge about the market. I would assume that banking-as-a-service, embedded finance, and perhaps also open banking have big potential in the market. However, I would also expect that use-cases could be quite different from Western markets, and especially wealth-related solutions might be much more relevant.
