Rewiring Finance: From Core to Cloud in Saudi Arabia’s New Financial Era

As Saudi banks modernize and fintechs scale, a new financial architecture is emerging – one where core meets cloud, data meets intelligence, and every customer moment connects. 

By Yousef Essali. Salesforce Delivery Lead, Horizontal Digital 

Saudi Arabia’s financial transformation isn’t just a fintech story – it’s a systems story. Vision 2030 is driving banks and fintechs alike to rewire the financial core: combining the trust of traditional banking, the agility of digital-first fintech, and the intelligence of platforms like Salesforce into one connected ecosystem. This is where the Kingdom’s next advantage lies – not in disruption, but in integration. 

Picture a 2030 financial journey where legacy strength meets digital speed. A leading Saudi bank uses its decades of trust and compliance expertise, while an agile fintech partner delivers a seamless AI-powered experience – instant onboarding, predictive budgeting and personalized savings advice. Together, they create finance that feels human, secure and intelligent. 

It’s the type of frictionless, anticipatory customer experience that Vision 2030 imagines: a financial sector built on innovation, inclusion and digital confidence. 

That vision isn’t far off. Saudi Arabia’s fintech market – worth roughly USD 2.85 billion in 2025 – is forecast to reach USD 5.3 billion by 2030, growing at 13% annually. Over 200 licensed fintechs are already active, and regulators have set a goal of 525 by 2030.  

Digital payments already account for nearly 80% of retail transactions. Mobile wallets and QR-based payment systems are now part of daily life, with adoption rates reaching around 65% of the population. 

These figures are impressive not only for their scale but for what they represent: a sector where technology, policy and purpose are moving in sync. 

From competition to collaboration 

Unlike the early waves of fintech disruption seen elsewhere, Saudi Arabia’s trajectory is shaped by collaboration. The Kingdom’s traditional banks, long pillars of financial stability, are increasingly becoming platforms for innovation – partnering with agile fintechs to co-create new products, services and ecosystems. 

Rather than “old versus new,” the Kingdom is witnessing “core meets cloud”: banks bring trust, scale and regulatory sophistication; fintechs contribute speed, data and design thinking. Together, they’re building a modular financial architecture, one that replaces rigid, monolithic systems with flexible, API-first foundations that make continuous innovation possible. 

This monolith-to-modular evolution is what allows established banks to move at fintech speed, and for fintechs to operate with bank-grade reliability. 

Salesforce sits at the center of this new architecture, connecting legacy cores with cloud-native intelligence – making modernization an evolution, not a replacement. 

Connected finance: The operating system of Vision 2030 

Saudi Arabia’s financial ecosystem is no longer divided between banks and fintechs. It’s converging into a connected fabric where every transaction, touchpoint and trust moment lives on shared intelligence.  

Salesforce provides that operating system, powering collaboration between the old and the new, the physical and the digital, the core and the cloud. 

Saudi Arabia’s financial transformation comes with clear metrics for success: from expanding SME lending and digital payments to deepening inclusion and attracting foreign investment. Achieving these goals requires more than new entrants; it demands that banks, fintechs and regulators operate on a shared digital foundation. 

That’s where Salesforce plays a pivotal role. By turning fragmented data, legacy processes and siloed systems into a single source of customer and operational truth, Salesforce gives both established banks and emerging fintechs the same superpower: the ability to innovate, scale and serve intelligently. 

In short, it’s not just about building fintechs from scratch; it’s about modernizing the entire financial fabric of the Kingdom. 

Here’s how Salesforce’s ecosystem, now supercharged by Agentforce, maps directly to Vision 2030’s financial-sector goals: 

Agentforce: the intelligent bridge 

Agentforce – Salesforce’s agentic-AI platform – is designed to augment both human service and digital experience. For fintechs and banks alike, it provides the link between speed and scale. 

Agentforce enables financial institutions to deploy AI agents that can converse, transact and learn – handling onboarding, answering credit queries, detecting fraud or preparing advisors for meetings.  

For a Saudi digital lender, that might mean a virtual credit officer that pre-qualifies SME applicants in seconds. For a bank, it could mean thousands of daily customer requests resolved before a human ever intervenes. 

Fintechs can integrate Agentforce into their core from inception; established banks can deploy it to extend legacy infrastructure with intelligent front-ends rather than replace the back-end overnight.  

The result is a shared layer of intelligence across the ecosystem – personalizing, automating and scaling service while respecting data sovereignty and Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL) requirements. 

Inclusion through innovation 

The strength of Saudi Arabia’s fintech ecosystem lies in its inclusivity. Vision 2030 emphasizes not just digital transformation but digital participation – bringing SMEs, citizens and investors into the fold. 

Notably, a recent report highlighted a 40% rise in Sharia-compliant fintech products, aligning innovation with the Kingdom’s cultural and religious values. This growth is expanding access for underserved groups such as SMEs and women entrepreneurs – reinforcing fintech’s role as both an economic and social catalyst. 

Platforms like Salesforce amplify that inclusion. With Agentforce driving automation and Data Cloud creating unified customer views, financial institutions can deliver hyper-personalized journeys – from financial-literacy campaigns to SME credit support – in both Arabic and English, across every channel. 

The architecture of ambition 

Saudi Arabia’s financial revolution won’t be defined by who moves faster, but by who connects better. Fintechs bring the spark; banks bring the structure; Salesforce brings the system that unites them. 

When the safety of the core meets the scalability of the cloud, intelligence becomes infrastructure, powering personalized, trusted and borderless finance for a new era of growth. That’s not disruption. That’s connected finance.  

About the author 

Yousef Essali is Salesforce Delivery Lead at Horizontal Digital, where he drives enterprise-scale Salesforce implementations across the Middle East. With a background in Salesforce consulting and delivery management, he helps organizations unlock value from cloud, data and AI to accelerate digital transformation and customer experience outcomes.