STC Bank Partners with Mozn to Enhance Anti-Financial Crime Tech in Saudi Arabia

Malaz Madani

Last updated 2-10-2025

3 min

STC Bank joins forces with Mozn to enhance digital banking security in Saudi Arabia.

Mozn's FOCAL platform uses "Financial Crime Intelligence" to detect suspicious transactions promptly.

STC Bank's adoption of FOCAL aims to meet regulatory demands and boost customer trust.

The partnership indicates Saudi tech firms solving local challenges without reliance on foreign solutions.

Mozn is striving for a secure and scalable digital economy, marking a shift in the fintech landscape.

Saudi Arabia’s fintech scene has been buzzing lately, and the latest move from STC Bank suggests the momentum isn’t slowing down any time soon. The bank has signed up with Mozn, the homegrown artificial intelligence outfit, to roll out its anti-financial crime platform known as FOCAL. On paper, that might sound a bit of a faff—yet in practice, it marks a serious step towards beefing up trust in digital banking across the Kingdom.

FOCAL isn’t your average software add-on. It’s built around what Mozn calls “Financial Crime Intelligence,” essentially a mix of real-time insights, smart analytics, and automated compliance tools. The idea is to give banks a sharper edge in spotting dodgy transactions before they slip through the cracks. Abdullah Alshubrami, Mozn’s Chief Commercial Officer, put it simply: digitalisation has opened doors, but criminals have been quick to sneak through them too. His point was that platforms like FOCAL help banks act decisively and stay compliant as regulatory demands get heavier.

On the flip side, STC Bank isn’t just adopting new tech for the sake of it. Ibrahim Alqahtani, who leads its anti-fraud division, stressed that artificial intelligence is reshaping finance altogether. According to him, integrating FOCAL doesn’t just keep regulators happy; it boosts customer confidence as well. And anyone who’s ever tried to convince users that online banking is bulletproof knows that trust is half the battle.

What struck me while reading about this deal is how Saudi innovators are increasingly solving Saudi problems. I remember speaking with a founder in Riyadh last year who said that staying ahead of fraudsters is like playing a game of chess where the opponent always has one extra move. Spot on analogy if you ask me. That said, partnerships like this show local tech firms can tackle these challenges without always looking abroad for solutions.

Mozn, after all, isn’t only about banking compliance. The company has been pushing forward with generative AI projects as well, nudging Saudi into that global conversation around advanced tech. It’s clear their ambition goes beyond plugging holes; they’re chasing a bigger vision of secure and scalable digital economies.

As for STC Bank, the tie-up cements its position as a forward-thinking player in the Kingdom’s fintech landscape. I reckon some customers might still be sceptical until they see the system in action—because, well… promises in tech don’t always meet reality. But clearly the bank is chuffed to bits to be seen as an early mover, aiming to set higher standards of security across the financial sector.

So while this partnership might sound highly technical on the surface, it reflects a wider shift in Saudi Arabia’s startup and banking communities—an increasing confidence in building homegrown answers to global problems. At Arageek, we’ve often said that empowering founders and innovators across MENA takes more than funding; it takes trust. And here, trust is exactly what’s being engineered, one algorithm at a time—even if the work behind it all is a bit messy, or should I say definately not simple.

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