The Saudi Central Bank issues new e-commerce payments interface

The Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) has introduced a major regulatory development: the launch of a new e-commerce payments interface on 7 July 2025. This initiative reflects SAMA’s strategic intent to streamline digital transactions, enhance consumer protection, and foster innovation across the Kingdom’s payments ecosystem. The plausible implications are far reaching for financial institutions, payment service providers (PSPs) and merchants. The new interface promises to simplify integration, reduce technical fragmentation across the market while also creating new financing model opportunities for businesses. The following article highlights the expected key features and the overall impact on the sector.

E-commerce payments interface: Expected key updates

Although the official laws and regulations supporting the new e-commerce payments interface are yet to be released, the available discourse outlines that SAMA's new interface introduces:

• A standardised framework for integrating digital payments systems. By design, this could reduce technical fragmentation and therefore aims at improving interoperability.
• Integrating the MADA network with global payment schemes could enable efficient and secure cross-border transactions. This is especially relevant to merchants operating across jurisdictions, as it makes existing payment processing consistent.
• Unified technical specifications mean that all merchants and payment providers will follow the same integration standards when connecting to Saudi Arabia’s payment system. This reduces the need for custom setups, speeds up onboarding, and lowers the risk of technical errors. As a result, businesses will be able to launch faster, scale more easily, and operate with greater consistency across platforms. 
• A centralised registration service has also been introduced, this provides for financial institutions and banks to offer personalised financing solutions to e-commerce businesses, beneficial to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
• The likely integration of tokenisation within the interface significantly enhances transaction security and mitigates the risk of fraud. This has the potential to reduce compliance burdens for merchants, all while lowering fraud exposure for banks and PSPs, and building consumer trust in digital payments across the Kingdom. 

Though full details are still pending, the interface evidently aims to ease merchant integration with Saudi Arabia’s payment system by minimising onboarding friction and standardising connections across MADA and global gateways.

Sector impact

Fintech firms have a real opportunity with Saudi Arabia’s new e-commerce payment interface; not just as a technical upgrade, but as a strategic lever. As merchants reassess how they manage customer data and onboard payment providers to comply with the expected new standards, early integration will allow fintech firms to align with national payment flows, reduce friction for local users, and position themselves at the heart of an evolving digital economy.

Banks and PSPs stand to benefit from faster, more direct access to Saudi Arabia’s digital payment infrastructure, enabling them to offer innovative financing products and data-driven services. The standardised setup also enhances their ability to analyse transaction flows and deliver tailored solutions to merchants. For merchants, the interface is likely to reduce reliance on fragmented gateway systems and improve compatibility with global platforms, making cross-border expansion more feasible. 

Financial institutions and PSPs must inevitably evaluate whether their existing systems are compatible with the technical standards introduced by the new e-commerce payments interface. Traditional infrastructures may require upgrades to ensure secure data handling and seamless connectivity. Institutions must also comply with the Personal Data Protection Law and SAMA’s cybersecurity framework, particularly when processing tokenised payment data. Additionally, the centralised registration feature enables banks to use transactional data for credit underwriting, which may necessitate updates to Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) procedures.

Together, these requirements demand a coordinated response across technology, compliance, and risk teams to align operations with the new regulatory environment and utilise the commercial potential of the interface.

Conclusion

SAMA’s updated reform is complementary to the nation’s strategy to build a secure and transparent digital financial ecosystem. It has the potential to create embedded finance opportunities allowing banks and PSPs to offer compliant, data-driven credit solutions within the digital economy.

For clients, the opportunity lies in readiness. Whether you are a bank, PSP, merchant, or legal advisor, now is the time to get ahead and assess your systems, update your frameworks, and explore how these changes can be leveraged for strategic advantage. 

Our team is advising clients across sectors on regulatory compliance, infrastructure, and risks. If you would like to discuss how these reforms affect your business or how to turn regulatory change into competitive edge please get in touch with Tom Bicknell or Barkha Doshi.