Saudi Fintech Stream Raises US$4 Million To Simplify Business Payments Across The MENA
Stream founder and CEO Ibrahim Aldlaigan told Inc. Arabia that his company's mission is "to make it easy to get paid by removing as much friction as possible from the entire payment experience."
Saudi Arabia-based billing and payments platform Stream has raised US$4 million in a seed funding round to advance its mission of improving business payments across the MENA region, starting with Saudi Arabia.
The round was led by Riyadh-based early-stage investment firm Outliers Venture Capital, with participation from UK-based venture capital firm BYLD and individual angel investors, including Careem co-founder Abdullah Elyas.
Founded by Ibrahim Aldlaigan in KSA in 2024, Stream helps businesses manage and automate the entire payment lifecycle, from issuing branded, app-free invoices to scheduling payments, processing through local rails, tracking cashflow, and reconciling transactions. The company plans to use the new capital to develop its product in engineering, compliance, and payment capabilities, while strengthening internal systems to support a growing subscriber base.
In an interview with Inc. Arabia, Aldlaigan, who leads Stream as its CEO, said that he launched his enterprise in Riyadh to answer a simple question: “Why is there still so much friction in getting paid?” While most payments in Saudi Arabia had moved online, recurring and future-dated payments such as tuition fees, rent, and subscriptions were still handled manually—and that's the gap that Stream aims to fill. “From the start, we built Stream as a complete billing layer that lets businesses issue, schedule, and track payments over time without the manual work,” Aldlaigan explained. “Our mission is to make it easy to get paid by removing as much friction as possible from the entire payment experience. When payments become structured, cashflow becomes predictable, and that’s what helps businesses grow.”
Stream initially worked with early childhood education businesses before expanding to school networks, software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies, and other sectors. Since launch, the company has reported 40 percent month-on-month (MoM) growth, processing millions in payments for thousands of customers across various merchants. Building that growth, however, came with technical and adoption hurdles unique to the region. “The hardest part is building for how payments actually work here,” Aldlaigan said. “Every country has its own rails, rules, and banks, and most weren’t designed for recurring payments. There’s no single system to plug into; you have to connect locally and design around the gaps.”
The Stream platform.
Aldlaigan noted that for many merchants, Stream represented a new way of handling payments altogether. “Most merchants didn’t have a proper billing setup before Stream," he said. "They used to collect everything upfront or manage payments reactively, following up only after delays or missed transfers. Adoption starts slowly, but the real shift happens once they see it working—when payments start happening automatically and the stress of chasing disappears.”
According to the Saudi Central Bank’s Payments Usage Study 2023, the total value of payment transactions in the Kingdom reached about $4.8 trillion, with 70 percent of retail transactions now digital. Yet, only seven percent of consumer transactions are recurring payments such as tuition fees, rent, and subscriptions—a gap Stream aims to close by digitizing and automating these processes.
Aldlaigan sees broader shifts underway in how regional businesses manage payments and cash flow moving forward, pointing to changing expectations not only from merchants, but on the customer side as well. “Businesses are starting to feel pressure from customers who expect more flexible ways to pay, whether monthly, per term, or in parts,” he said. “But most financial systems in the region weren’t built for that, so companies are often forced to resort to financing solutions or other workarounds. They’re now looking for better tools to manage payments over time while staying in control of cashflow.”
Looking to the future, Aldlaigan believes that demand for flexibility, combined with regulatory momentum, will reshape the MENA’s B2B payments landscape. “Regulators and banks across the region are upgrading rails and encouraging more digital flows,” Aldlaigan said. “These two forces—system modernization from the top and growing consumer demand for flexibility—are pushing businesses across the region to catch up and rethink how they get paid."
Pictured in the lead image is Stream founder and CEO Ibrahim Aldlaigan. All images courtesy Stream.
