Elm and BENEFIT Tag Team to Strengthen Bahrain’s Fintech Ambitions

Editorial Team

Last updated 4-11-2025

3 min

Bahrain and Saudi Arabia's Elm and BENEFIT signed an MoU to boost regional fintech collaboration.

This partnership aims to make financial services more accessible and secure through digital solutions.

Elm’s expertise meets Bahrain's fintech foothold, promising sharper tools for businesses and users.

BENEFIT's strategy focuses on broader financial access across the MENA region.

This collaboration fits into Gulf states' race towards innovative financial solutions.

It’s no secret that Bahrain has been pushing hard to cement its standing as a regional fintech hub, and the latest move in that direction comes from a new partnership between Saudi Arabia’s Elm and Bahrain’s BENEFIT. The two sides inked a Memorandum of Understanding during the Gateway Gulf Investment Forum 2025, held in Manama earlier this month.

Under the deal, Elm — well known for its government digital solutions — and BENEFIT, Bahrain’s leading electronic financial transactions network, will join forces to expand cooperation across several fronts. Think digital onboarding for financial services, shared digital solutions, and a bigger push toward regional digital empowerment. It sounds like a mouthful, but in essence, the pair want to make financial services slicker, more secure and, crucially, more accessible.

Majed Al Ghamdi, Elm’s EVP of Government Digital Products, and Abdulwahed AlJanahi, BENEFIT’s CEO, were the signatories who formalised the agreement. Both later highlighted how this alliance would build on existing fintech strengths in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, tying in neatly with the Gulf’s broader digital transformation drive.

Elm’s spokesperson, Majed bin Saad Al Arifi, called the collaboration a logical next step in the company’s regional ambitions. He reckons combining Elm’s secure digital tech expertise with BENEFIT’s financial network could open doors to sharper, safer fintech tools for everyday users and businesses alike. And honestly, he might be spot on — Bahrain’s fintech ecosystem’s already quite the bee’s knees in the region.

On the flip side, AlJanahi pointed out that working with Elm fits BENEFIT’s growth strategy of forming stronger international partnerships in fintech and digital inclusion. The real goal here, he said, is to develop practical solutions that boost efficiency and broaden financial access across MENA. That’s music to the ears of many founders we speak to at Arageek who find cross-border fintech integration a bit of a faff.

BENEFIT’s role in Bahrain’s fintech scene has been pivotal, linking the dots between banks, government entities and service providers. For Elm, meanwhile, it’s another sign that the company’s not resting on its laurels. The firm’s clearly intent on growing beyond its Saudi roots by weaving itself into the region’s evolving digital fabric.

Now, I can’t help but think this partnership reflects a wider regional trend — a sort of quiet race among Gulf states to see who can power the next wave of financial innovation first. And believe it or not, that healthy competition might just be what keeps the momentum alive.

Either way, it’ll be interesting to see how this MoU moves from fine words to tangible projects. If both parties can turn collaboration into execution, the outcome could be a game changer for the fintech space — or at least a well-needed kick to speed things up. And for us at Arageek, who’ve long championed startup energy across MENA, this kind of cross-border partnership definately gives fintech founders something to smile about.

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