Halan UAE and Lean Tech Join Forces to Revolutionise Gulf Fintech Scene

MNT-Halan’s fintech arm in the Gulf, Halan UAE, has teamed up with Lean Technologies in a move that could shake things up for underbanked people and small businesses across the region. The agreement, sealed at Money2020 in Riyadh by Halan GCC’s CEO Omar Ramadan and Lean’s COO Mehdi Tazi, aims to tap into open banking to widen access to credit in a market where too many are still left on the sidelines.

It’s a curious paradox, isn’t it? On one hand, the UAE has become a global hub for digital finance, yet roughly 3.7 million people there remain unbanked or underbanked. SMEs—more than 90% of the country’s businesses—continue to face hurdles in securing formal loans. That’s the gap Halan and Lean are trying to plug by combining smart lending tools with regulator-approved access to bank data.

According to Mounir Nakhla, the founder and CEO of MNT-Halan, this is more than just a commercial tie-up. He described it as a turning point for financial access, especially with the integration of Lean’s infrastructure and Halan’s AI-powered “Neuron” engine, which crunches customer data to make credit scoring more accurate, even for people without a traditional history of borrowing. And fair play—it’s spot on that traditional models have left many out in the cold.

Halan UAE itself only launched in December 2024 and, believe it or not, it already serves more than 220,000 customers. Products like earned wage access, salary-based lending and car financing have struck a chord with those who struggle to make ends meet between paydays. I reckon that kind of speed of adoption says plenty about the pent-up need for alternative financing. New services are also in the pipeline, and Ramadan was frank about the ambition: this partnership, he said, is about scaling to millions.

Lean’s co-founder and CEO, Hisham Al-Falih, added that open banking fits perfectly with both the UAE’s Open Finance Strategy and Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, which both aim to create a fintech ecosystem rivaling the very best globally. For Lean, having been among the first to secure approval under the UAE’s framework gives them a strong footing. On the flip side, turning regulatory clarity into real customer trust is still going to be a bit of a faff, and no amount of AI wizardry can shortcut that.

From where I sit, watching the startup ecosystem in this region through Arageek’s lens over the years, collaborations like this often act as a litmus test. Can AI-driven credit scoring genuinely open doors for people who’ve only ever been treated as “risky” by banks? Or will it simply tighten the net in a different way? Time will tell. For now, though, both sides seem chuffed to bits about setting a new standard in how technology meets financial inclusion—and in a part of the world that dearly needs both speed and trust, they might just be onto something.

And yes, the spelling of “definately” in one of their promotional brochures I caught the other day gave me a little chuckle. Even fintech unicorns aren’t immune to small slip-ups.

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