Jeel teams up with Mambu to drive Saudi’s FinTech growth

By Vriti Gothi

Jeel, the innovation and technology subsidiary of Riyadh Bank, has partnered with Mambu, the global cloud-native core banking platform, to advance Saudi Arabia’s digital finance landscape through the Jeel Sandbox, the FinTech sandbox accelerator developed in collaboration with FinTech Saudi.

The Jeel Sandbox stands at the forefront of Saudi Arabia’s FinTech transformation, acting as a critical enabler of the national innovation agenda. Designed to empower startups, financial institutions, and technology innovators, the platform provides a secure, scalable environment to test, validate, and deploy next-generation financial solutions. By bridging the gap between ideation and commercialisation, it reduces time-to-market and accelerates innovation across the Kingdom’s rapidly evolving financial ecosystem.

Built on Mambu’s composable banking architecture and hosted on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) in full compliance with the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) cloud framework, the Jeel Sandbox merges agility with regulatory-grade security. The platform offers a progressive innovation journey from mock APIs and Wallet-as-a-Service (WaaS) capabilities to a fully integrated Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) model, creating the foundation for a unified ecosystem where FinTechs can seamlessly build, test, and scale digital solutions.

“Our collaboration with Mambu strengthens Jeel’s role in driving innovation and enabling FinTech leadership in Saudi Arabia. Through the Jeel Sandbox, we are laying the foundation for scalable Banking as a Service, giving FinTechs, innovators and institutions the confidence to innovate, comply, and grow within a secure, future-ready environment fully aligned with Vision 2030,” said George Harrak, Chief Executive Officer of Jeel.

The partnership marks a major milestone in the development of Saudi Arabia’s financial technology infrastructure. The first pilot cohort of FinTechs is expected to onboard later this year, with participants set to benefit from enhanced testing capabilities, regulatory readiness, and seamless pathways to commercial deployment through Jeel’s BaaS offering.

“This is a pivotal moment for Mambu as we continue to increase our presence in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Supporting Vision 2030 through our technology developments and partnerships with leaders in the area demonstrates how committed Mambu is to furthering the goals of the region. We look forward to working with Jeel to support financial institutions in the initial stages of growth,” said Harjit Kang, Regional Lead, Middle East at Mambu.