Nihal Abu Ghattas, Regional GM at Ozone API and Co-Chair of the MFTA Open Finance Working Group, joins FinTech TV to break down how the UAE and Saudi Arabia are each building the future of open finance, and why both approaches are worth watching.
Nihal explains how the UAE built the world’s first centralised national open finance hub, connecting all 200 financial institutions in just 18 months, a milestone that took the UK five years to reach. She also unpacks Saudi Arabia’s first open banking licence, awarded to Lean Technologies in March, marking the Kingdom’s shift from sandbox testing to a live market.
Topics covered in this conversation:
- What is open finance and why it matters to everyday consumers
- Inside the UAE’s national open finance hub and the CBUAE’s FIT programme
- Saudi Arabia’s first open banking licence and what it signals for the Kingdom
- Centralised vs decentralised: comparing the UAE and Saudi approaches
- The UAE’s first international open finance payment rail
- Closing the consumer education gap
- Why open finance is safer than traditional data sharing
- What’s next: AI-driven advice, account-to-account payments, and open data