SAMA Signs Ant International Deal to Bring Alipay+ to Saudi Merchants

Saudi merchants should be able to take Alipay+ payments by 2026 under an agreement the Saudi Central Bank signed with Ant International. The two sides announced it at Money20/20 Middle East in Riyadh.

The arrangement connects Alipay+ to mada, the kingdom's national payment system. Once live, visitors to Saudi Arabia will be able to pay with Alipay+-linked wallets at stores that offer the service.

A domestic rail with cross-border reach

mada already carries the bulk of card traffic inside the country. Attaching an international wallet network to it gives inbound visitors a way to pay without opening a local account, and gives merchants a channel they do not have to build on their own. The work is technical as much as commercial. Wallet traffic has to clear through mada rather than sit in a parallel system beside it.

SAMA describes the agreement as one piece of a broader effort to serve the local market. The central bank says it works with payment providers to reduce reliance on cash, and that it approves digital payment solutions meeting international standards. That filter matters for any cross-border link, since a foreign wallet network has to satisfy the same rules as a domestic one.

Tied to Vision 2030

The deal falls under the Financial Sector Development Program, part of Saudi Vision 2030. That program has pushed banks, fintechs and payment firms toward electronic transactions, and SAMA has treated cash displacement as a policy target rather than a side effect of other changes.

SAMA says the agreement is intended to strengthen the kingdom's position in fintech and digital payments. The claim is broad. The mechanism is not: a national switch, an international wallet network, and a date.

What decides whether it works

Coverage comes first. Alipay+ will function only at merchants that opt in, so acceptance depends on how quickly acquiring banks connected to mada bring terminals into the scheme. Volume comes second. Visitors are a smaller pool than residents, and cross-border wallet spending will not shift the cash-reliance picture by itself.

The direction matters more than either number. Saudi Arabia is assembling payment infrastructure that serves people who live in the country and people who pass through it, on the same rails. Ant International gets a Gulf foothold for Alipay+. SAMA gets one more reason for merchants to keep their terminals switched on.

The featured image was edited by Fintech News UAE from an image on SAMA's website.