Lean Technologies Pioneers ‘Pay by Bank’ Under UAE’s New Open Finance Era

Lean Technologies is doubling down on Pay by Bank in the UAE, expanding its capabilities just as the country’s Open Finance framework becomes fully operational. It might sound technical at first glance, but the shift is quite straightforward: businesses can now initiate bank-to-bank payments on regulated rails, rather than relying heavily on cards and their sometimes eye-watering fees.

For the UAE’s digital payments scene, this is more than a routine product update. It marks a structural change. Lean has bundled its account-to-account (A2A) services, covering deposits, collections, checkout and subscriptions, into a clearer Pay by Bank suite. In simple terms, companies can move money directly between bank accounts, securely and under a national framework, without the usual card networks sitting in the middle.

Lean has actually been laying the groundwork for years. Since 2022, it has enabled A2A payments across the UAE and processed billions in total transaction volume. That includes integrations with major names such as e&, Careem, DAMAC and OKX. According to the company, more than $100 million in card fees have already been saved by businesses using this model. Not bad at all, and, for many founders watching every dirham, that kind of saving is spot on.

Tewfik Cassis, Chief Product Officer at Lean Technologies, said that bringing these services together under the Pay by Bank banner reinforces account-to-account payments as a visible and scalable option within digital commerce. He noted that when Lean first began enabling A2A payments in the UAE around four years ago, there was a strong conviction they would become a core part of the digital economy. Processing billions in volume across large enterprises, he said, has shown the model works in everyday digital journeys.

The launch of regulated payment initiation under the UAE’s Open Finance framework, he added, represents the next phase. Pay by Bank builds on an already proven commercial model, but now sits on nationally standardised infrastructure. In other words, what started as a clever workaround is becoming a fully endorsed piece of financial plumbing.

If you’ve followed the UAE’s regulatory moves, this moment was always coming. The authorities have taken a structured route from policy to practice, and, credit where it’s due, implementation has been relatively smooth. And believe it or not, that is not always the case in financial services reform. For startups, clarity removes a bit of the faff. You know the rails are official, supervised and built for scale.

From my own time around founders in the region, payment costs are one of those constant headaches that quietly eat into margins. I remember a fintech founder telling me over coffee that card fees felt like a “silent tax” on growth. So when infrastructure players manage to chip away at that burden, the ecosystem tends to be chuffed to bits. At Arageek, we often see how these behind-the-scenes upgrades energise entrepreneurs more than flashy announcements do.

That said, cards are not disappearing tomorrow. Pay by Bank is being positioned to operate alongside traditional networks, not to replace them overnight. On the flip side, giving consumers and businesses more choice usually nudges the market forward. I reckon healthy competition in payments is almost always a good thing, even if it ruffles a few feathers.

Lean, founded in 2019, has grown into one of the region’s key financial infrastructure providers. The company says it has supported more than 400 businesses, processed over $4 billion in transaction volume, connected upwards of 2 million accounts and verified more than 3 million. Those numbers suggest that this latest expansion is less a leap into the unknown and more a natural next step.

The UAE is already one of the most digitally connected economies globally. Embedding regulated, scalable A2A payments across commerce and financial services could definately deepen that position. Well… I mean, infrastructure rarely makes headlines, but it often makes history. And in this case, the rails being laid today may quietly define how money moves in the Emirates for years to come.

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