Building a fintech product can mean spending years developing the financial infrastructure, compliance systems and operational capabilities needed before a business can serve its first customer. Saudi Arabia-based startup Vrtx wants to remove that barrier.
The Riyadh-based company has raised $3.6 million in pre-seed funding to help businesses embed financial services such as digital wallets, card issuance, payouts and transfers directly into their products, without building the underlying systems from scratch.
Founded in 2025 by Mishal Bin Slimah and Omar Shaaban, Vrtx is building an infrastructure platform designed to help companies move from concept to live financial services with less technical and operational complexity.
The round was backed by SC Ventures by Standard Chartered, Sadu Capital, BYLD, Suhail Ventures, F6 Ventures, TAZ Investment and Palm Ventures.
Vrtx has also received In-Principle Approval from the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) for an Electronic Money Institution licence, an important step towards offering its services within the Kingdom’s regulatory framework.
The founders previously worked together at Tweeq, an early Saudi digital financial platform acquired by Tabby. Their experience building financial products exposed them to the challenges of assembling technology, security, compliance and operations in parallel.
Vrtx aims to bring these capabilities together through a platform offering digital wallets, payouts, card issuance, transfers and transaction processing. Its planned tools include a secure test environment, guided workflows and operational capabilities to help businesses manage balances, transactions and financial rules as they scale.
“Building fintech products today is hard,” said Bin Slimah, Co-Founder and CEO of Vrtx. He described the company’s vision as making financial capabilities standard building blocks that businesses can select and integrate according to their needs.
For investors, the opportunity lies in the growing role of embedded finance, which allows businesses to integrate financial services into products customers already use. Instead of building every component independently, companies can rely on specialist infrastructure to bring financial features to market.
SC Ventures by Standard Chartered said the investment reflects its conviction in the growth of embedded finance in Saudi Arabia. BYLD Co-Founder and Managing Partner Youcef Oudjidane also highlighted the importance of developing financial innovation alongside regulatory compliance.
Vrtx’s next challenge will be turning its infrastructure into a dependable, scalable service while progressing through the regulatory process. Its success will depend on whether it can help businesses launch financial products more efficiently while meeting the security, operational and compliance requirements of the financial sector.
