STC Pay
“Can Saudi Arabia's largest mobile wallet evolve into the kingdom's dominant digital bank for consumers and SMEs?”
Founded2018
HQRiyadh, Saudi Arabia
Total raised$200M
Latest roundCorporate Minority (Western Union, ~2020)
IndustryFintech / Neobank
The story
Launched in 2018 as STC Pay, the mobile wallet arm of Saudi Telecom Company, it became Saudi Arabia's largest e-wallet and one of the first SAMA-licensed EMIs. After Western Union's ~$200M minority investment in 2020 and the issuance of a digital banking license in 2021, the company replatformed onto Temenos and scaled to 8M+ accounts. In 2025 it completed its pivot from wallet to fully licensed digital bank, rebranding to STC Bank and expanding into SME merchant services, financing (working capital, capex, POS) and payroll.
Product timeline
2018
Launched as STC Pay, a mobile digital wallet by Saudi Telecom Company.· banking
2020
Received EMI license from SAMA; Western Union takes ~$200M minority stake.· banking
2020
Selected Temenos Transact and Temenos Payments as core banking platform.· banking
2021
Partnered with Visa to issue Visa cards to STC Pay customers.· card
2021
Granted digital banking license by SAMA, paving the way for STC Bank conversion.· banking
2022
Scaled to 8 million accounts on Temenos open platform for composable banking.· banking
2025
Completed pilot, received SAMA 'no objection' and rebranded from STC Pay to STC Bank (effective 28 Jan 2025).· pivot
Regulated entities
3
regulatory licences held by STC Pay
Licence types, jurisdictions and registered entities are in the Embedded Finance Index report.
The stack
9 layers disclosed in STC Pay’s embedded-finance stack
Payments / PSP
STC Pay (self-operated wallet)
Banking / BaaS
in the full report
Card issuing
in the full report
Card network
in the full report
Ledger
in the full report
Lending
in the full report
Payroll
in the full report
Sponsor bank
in the full report
FX & payouts
in the full report
Accounting gap: significant
15 more providers across 8 layers, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.