Saudi Arabia & UAE Rank Most Conducive for Islamic Fintech Globally

Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Malaysia are emerging as the leading markets in Islamic fintech, with global transaction volumes projected to reach $341 billion by 2029, according to the Global Islamic Fintech Report 2025/26 by DinarStandard and Elipses.

The sector, estimated at $198 billion in 2024/25, is growing at 11.5% annually. Under the Global Islamic Fintech Index—which assesses regulation, infrastructure, talent, market maturity and capital availability—the three countries rank among the most supportive ecosystems for Shariah-compliant digital finance.

Digital assets are increasingly central to the sector’s development. Use cases include stablecoins and central bank digital currencies for settlement, tokenisation of real-world assets and embedding Shariah governance into digital systems. Stablecoins had an estimated market capitalisation of $317 billion in early 2026, while tokenised real-world assets stood at approximately $4.31 billion.

Saudi Arabia has introduced infrastructure to enable regulated real estate tokenisation and digital ownership transfers. In the UAE, the central bank has launched the Digital Dirham initiative for wholesale and retail central bank digital currencies as part of its Financial Infrastructure Transformation Programme, while Abu Dhabi’s FIDA cluster is developing institutional-grade digital asset infrastructure under regulatory supervision. Malaysia has published a discussion paper on asset tokenisation and continues to advance Islamic digital banking frameworks.

The report ranked Saudi Arabia, Iran, Malaysia and the UAE among the top 10 countries by Islamic fintech transaction volume, alongside Indonesia, Kuwait, Turkiye, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Qatar. Fitch estimates global outstanding sukuk exceeded $1 trillion in the third quarter of 2025, with 1% to 5% of issuance potentially moving on-chain, representing between $9 billion and $45 billion in assets.