Saudi Arabian financial institution, Saudi Awwal Financial institution (SAB), a Riyadh-based Saudi joint inventory firm during which international 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 rules utilizing blockchain to make the method sooner, 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 prompt settlement, liquidity increase & 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 progress within the KSA
In keeping with Oumla’s web site, “It replaces paperwork and handbook steps with sensible digital contracts, ensures all transactions are securely and immutably recorded, and helps banks handle their belongings and liquidity extra simply and with lowered danger.”
Victor L. Phillipe, Digital Property and Forex Lead at SAB famous, “Oumla has a stable understanding of blockchain know-how. Their workforce supported us with steering.”
This 12 months, Saudi-based layer 1 blockchain platform Oumla partnered with Avalanche with the intention of making Saudi Arabia’s first layer 1 blockchain absolutely 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 comparable to blockchain, AI, and Huge Information analytics.
The entire variety of legitimate enterprise data in KSA reached 1.72 million. Saudi Arabia witnessed 34% progress in AI industrial registrations and 51% progress in blockchain industrial registrations, with over 4,000 corporations now registered within the nation.
