Saudi Arabia-based fintech Stream has secured a $4 million seed round to accelerate its push into automated B2B billing and collections across MENA. The financing is led by Outliers VC, with participation from BYLD Ventures and angel investors including Careem co-founder Abdullah Elyas. The company says the cash will speed product development, strengthen compliance, and expand payment capabilities as digital transactions deepen across the region.
Funding Details
Stream’s seed round positions the startup to scale its infrastructure and support a growing subscriber base. Management framed the raise as a step toward removing friction from how businesses get paid rather than how consumers spend. Founder and CEO Ibrahim Aldlaigan said the company is building tools and rails that make business payments as seamless in MENA as in any mature market.
Product and Proposition
Founded in 2024, Stream offers end-to-end payment lifecycle management for businesses that need structure beyond simple checkout flows. Its platform enables app-free invoicing, flexible payment scheduling, and collection over local rails, paired with cash-flow visibility, reconciliation, and record keeping. The aim is to let a business define whether a transaction is one-time, recurring, or installment-based, while Stream automates execution in the background.
Market Context
Saudi Arabia’s payments landscape is digitizing at pace, yet recurring billing remains underpenetrated. According to the Saudi Central Bank’s 2023 Payments Usage Study, total payment transaction value reached roughly $4.8 trillion, with about 70% of retail transactions now digital. Despite this shift, only around 7% of consumer transactions are recurring, a gap Stream is explicitly targeting.
Traction and Verticals
The startup began by serving early childhood education providers, where tuition and fee schedules demand reliable recurring tools. It has since expanded into school networks, SaaS vendors, and additional service verticals that need predictable, flexible payment plans. Stream reports 40% month-on-month growth, processing millions in payments for thousands of customers across dozens of merchants.
Customer Problem
Many businesses in Saudi Arabia and the wider region still collect fees upfront because they lack systems that manage billing over time. Manual or semi-manual processes create operational burden, poor visibility, and higher churn when payments fail or schedules shift. Stream addresses these pain points by synchronizing billing with the real flow of services, improving predictability for both merchants and their customers.
Technology and Compliance
Beyond invoicing and collection mechanics, Stream is investing in the infrastructure layers that de-risk and scale recurring payments. The company emphasizes local-rails connectivity, reconciliation accuracy, and audit-ready records as core to merchant trust. Compliance tooling will be expanded alongside engineering and user experience as the company rolls out to more regulated segments.
Competitive Positioning
B2B payments in MENA have historically focused on acceptance, checkout, and card enablement, leaving gaps in post-sale billing orchestration. Stream’s bet is that merchants need a system of record for receivables that integrates with local payments and supports flexible schedules natively. By concentrating on receivables, the company seeks to differentiate from consumer-oriented wallets and generic gateways.
Use of Proceeds
Proceeds from the round will fund engineering hires, compliance expansions, and enhancements to payment capabilities across target markets. Stream also plans to strengthen internal systems to sustain subscriber growth and maintain service quality at scale. User experience upgrades are slated to reduce setup friction and speed time to value for new merchants.
Outlook
Management argues that recurring billing for tuition, fees, rent, and subscriptions is still underserved despite rapid digitization. As more sectors formalize pay-over-time relationships, the company expects demand for automated receivables to compound. With fresh capital and backing from regional investors, Stream aims to convert a structural market gap into durable share gains.
Stream’s seed round underscores the momentum behind digitized receivables in a market that has prioritized spending over getting paid. By aligning billing schedules with service delivery and tying into local rails, the company is positioning for scale in a high-value, under-automated niche. Execution on infrastructure, compliance, and user experience will determine whether it can turn early growth into category leadership.