{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"FWDstart","title":"Lean Technologies’ Tewfik Cassis on Launching Pay by Bank, Building the AWS for Fintech, and Why Stablecoins Could Transform Payments","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":2820,"description":"For Tewfik Cassis, Lean Technologies is not an open banking company, or at least not only that.\nIt’s trying to become the AWS for fintech in the Middle East, an infrastructure layer so reliable, ubiquitous and necessary that payments, verified financial data, underwriting and money movement can be built on top of it without merchants stitching together five or six providers.That ambition now stretches well beyond Lean’s original open banking shorthand.\nFounded in 2019, Lean has raised more than $100M to date, giving it the backing to push deeper into Pay by Bank, Open Finance and the broader fintech infrastructure stack across the region.\nWe sat down with Lean CPO Tewfik Cassis on the eve of the company’s biggest product launch to date, as it prepared to roll out its Pay by Bank suite across deposits, collections, checkout and pay-by-link.\nIn the UAE and Saudi Arabia, Lean is building across account-to-account payments, open finance data, underwriting and money movement, while keeping one eye firmly on what comes next, from stablecoin-powered remittances to agentic commerce.\nWhile cards are unlikely to disappear any time soon, debit card transactions, manual bank transfers and clunky direct debit experiences are all up for grabs.\nAnd as Tewfik puts it, there’s no real reason for a customer to use debit over account-to-account payments if the experience, incentives and reliability are there.\nWe also get into what it actually takes to build in a regulated market, why Lean is willing to over-invest before regulation fully lands, and how the company thinks about being first to market without losing discipline.\nThis was a really, really fun and wide-ranging conversation, so a massive thanks again to Tewfik for taking the time to come on the FWDstart podcast.\nWe cover:Why Lean is positioning itself as the AWS for fintech in the Middle East, and why Tewfik does not see the company as just an open banking providerThe thinking behind Lean’s biggest product launch to date,...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/rw5tuXzSlVVTIYGhONUr8fUF7P47ZEBy7HgU8S4OYCc/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9iY2M5/ZDg1NjgwNzY2YzM0/ODcxOTc5MGEzOWMw/Mzk0OS5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}