HALA's pivot bet: Saudi micro-firms, not consumers, take the $157M

HALA is a Riyadh fintech providing embedded financial services to micro, small and medium enterprises and freelancers: business accounts, card issuance, payments and transfers, POS terminals and data-driven lending — an alternative operating bank for small firms.

That Saudi micro-businesses, not consumers, are the payments goldmine — and a startup can give them bank-grade accounts, cards and credit faster than banks will.

Series B of $157M in Sept 2025 co-led by TPG's Rise Fund and Sanabil Investments at a reported valuation around $900M; earlier $6.5M Series A in 2021; acquired UAE payments firm Paymennt in Feb 2023.

Co-founders Maher Loubieh, an investment banker, and Esam Alnahdi set up HALA in Riyadh in 2017. The first product was a peer-to-peer / digital-wallet service aimed at consumers, which attracted hundreds of thousands of users but left the founders unconvinced about the economics. The customer conversations that mattered, they found, were with micro and small businesses struggling to open accounts, accept card payments and get credit — so the company rebuilt itself around them.

HALA obtained licensing from Saudi's central bank and built a full SME stack: business accounts, cards, payments, transfers, POS hardware and lending. After a $6.5M Series A in 2021 it acquired UAE payments firm Paymennt in Feb 2023, and by Sept 2025 it reported more than 140,000 businesses and over $8B of annual transaction volume. On 2025-09-15 it announced a $157M Series B — one of the largest fintech Series B rounds in the Middle East — co-led by TPG's Rise Fund and Sanabil (PIF's investment arm), with QED, Raed, Impact46, MEVP, Wamda Capital and others participating.

Still scaling as of Sept 2025: the Series B is earmarked to deepen lending and embedded-finance products for MSMEs and freelancers in Saudi Arabia and to expand regionally, building on the Paymennt acquisition and a team HALA describes as the future 'bank of SMEs'.

Saudi banks under-served micro-businesses structurally, while the state was pushing SME contribution to GDP — HALA picked a gap with policy tailwind and no dominant incumbent.

The pivot reused what worked: the wallet phase built payment infrastructure and SAMA licensing, so the SME business stood on rails instead of starting from zero.

Owning transaction data made HALA a better lender: it could underwrite from real cash flow, which banks with no SME data could not do cheaply.

The 2023 Paymennt acquisition added regional card-payment capability, turning a Saudi accounts play into a Gulf-wide embedded finance stack.

The $157M Series B with TPG Rise and Sanabil validated the model with patient, growth-stage capital rather than forcing premature profitability.

HALA's wallet proved it could build; the durable business hid in the customer nobody courts. The SME pivot reused those rails and trust to reach 140k firms and a ~$900M valuation.

As of 2025-09-21 HALA is scaling as Saudi Arabia's leading MSME fintech: over 140,000 businesses, more than $8B in annual transaction volume, and roughly $900M valuation after the September 2025 Series B. The stated plan is to expand lending and embedded-finance products for MSMEs and freelancers, grow regionally from the Paymennt acquisition, and keep building toward the 'future bank of SMEs'. Its main risks are Saudi banks and regional neobanks moving down-market into the same segment, and credit losses if its data-driven lending scales faster than underwriting quality.