Saudi Arabia’s central bank has granted an e-wallet license to Light Advanced Financial, the kingdom’s 32nd licensed payment company. Fahad Anteet, Co-Founder and CEO of Lite, says the license is not the achievement. It is the permission to play.
He joins Johnny Fernandez on FinTech TV just after the license and a $3.2 million pre-seed round. Anteet spent nearly 20 years at Mastercard and Visa before building Lite. He explains why SAMA oversight matters when businesses trust you with their money, and why Lite, though called an e-wallet, is built for businesses rather than consumers.
His diagnosis of the gap: payments are fragmented, and the bigger the business, the more it hurts. Different acquirers and providers, more locations and employees, and legacy systems that do not work together. For a consumer, a payment ends at the tap. For a business, the questions begin there: when the money arrives, which sales it matches, why a fee was charged and how much cash there will be next week.
The conversation also covers Saudi regulation and Vision 2030. Electronic payments reached 85% of retail payments last year, and the 70% target set for 2025 was reached two years early. Anteet says the regulator has opened the door to new licensed players while keeping the bar high, and that the next phase of innovation is about how digital money works for the businesses using it.
On embedded finance, his conclusion: the opportunity is not another financial product. It is connecting the ones businesses already use. Clarity on what is coming in and going out makes everything else, including lending, better.
Guest: Fahad Anteet, Co-Founder and CEO, Lite (Light Advanced Financial)
Interviewer: Johnny Fernandez, FinTech TV
