Saudi Arabian financial institution, Saudi Awwal Financial institution (SAB), a Riyadh-based Saudi joint inventory firm through which world banking group HSBC owns a minority stake, has introduced the world’s first Islamic Repo on blockchain in partnership with Oumla, a safe, scalable blockchain infrastructure supplier for companies, enterprises, and governments.
The blockchain-enabled Islamic Repo allowed SAB to lend to different banks in compliance with Islamic finance ideas utilizing blockchain to make the method quicker, safer and extra clear. The implementation comes months after SAB’s digital belongings Summit.
Proud to ship KSA’s 1st Islamic Repo on blockchain with Oumla & our key companions — testing immediate settlement, liquidity enhance & real-time reporting.
Born from our Nov’24 Digital Property Summit, this milestone drives our mission to speed up monetary innovation. And we’re… pic.twitter.com/o6YLPOgmAv— SAB | الأول (@alawwalsab) August 19, 2025
SAB faucets into blockchain development within the KSA
In response to Oumla’s web site, “It replaces paperwork and guide steps with good digital contracts, ensures all transactions are securely and immutably recorded, and helps banks handle their belongings and liquidity extra simply and with decreased danger.”
Victor L. Phillipe, Digital Property and Forex Lead at SAB famous, “Oumla has a strong understanding of blockchain know-how. Their staff supported us with steerage.”
This yr, Saudi-based layer 1 blockchain platform Oumla partnered with Avalanche with the purpose of making Saudi Arabia’s first layer 1 blockchain totally hosted in KSA. As per the X put up, “This collaboration will help startups and SMEs, driving technological innovation throughout Saudi Arabia and the MENA area.”
In July 2025, the Saudi Ministry of Commerce, in its quarterly enterprise sector bulletin, famous that of the 80,000 new enterprise industrial licenses registered in Q2 of 2025 in Saudi Arabia, most of them are in high-growth industries corresponding to blockchain, AI, and Massive Knowledge analytics.
The full variety of legitimate enterprise data in KSA reached 1.72 million. Saudi Arabia witnessed 34% development in AI industrial registrations and 51% development in blockchain industrial registrations, with over 4,000 corporations now registered within the nation.
