• Lean Technologies and UAE fintech Ziina have launched the UAE's first One-Tap Pay by Bank experience under the country's Open Finance framework, enabling users to connect their bank account once and top up their Ziina wallet with a single tap.
• Built on Lean's Deposits solution, the feature removes the need for users to repeatedly enter banking credentials or be redirected to their bank, marking the evolution of Pay by Bank from one-off payments to recurring, low-friction account-to-account transactions.
• Founded in 2019, Lean provides financial infrastructure that enables businesses to access financial data and initiate payments. Since launch, the company has supported more than 400 businesses, processed over $5 billion in transaction volume, connected more than 2 million accounts, and completed over 3 million account verifications.
• Founded in 2020 by Faisal Toukan, Sarah Toukan, and Talal Toukan, Ziina is a UAE-licensed fintech serving more than 260,000 businesses and consumers. The announcement was made during Lean's "Pay by Bank: The Default Way to Pay" event, attended by over 150 leaders from banking, fintech, commerce, and regulatory sectors.

Press release:

Lean Technologies and Ziina have launched the UAE's first One-Tap Pay by Bank experience under the Open Finance framework, marking a significant step in the maturation of account-to-account payments in the region.

Built on Lean's Deposits solution, the capability enables Ziina users to securely connect their bank account once and make future wallet top-ups with a single tap – no re-entry of credentials, no redirect to a bank portal.

The launch demonstrates that Pay by Bank in the UAE has moved beyond one-time transactions. With the underlying infrastructure in place and regulation live, the focus now shifts to building the recurring, low-friction experiences that drive everyday usage.

Developed in partnership with Lean, the capability combines Ziina's consumer payment experience with Lean's Open Finance infrastructure, demonstrating how account-to-account payments can support increasingly seamless digital payment journeys.

Omar Hamada, VP of Sales at Lean, said, "Pay by Bank has been live in the UAE for some time, but until now, it has only been available as single instant payments. Working with Ziina, we've shown that the infrastructure is capable of supporting recurring, low-effort payment experiences, the kind that make a payment method genuinely part of how people pay every day. That is the direction the market is heading, and this is the first example of it.”

Talal Toukan, Co-Founder and Head of Engineering at Ziina, said, "People expect financial products to be as simple and intuitive as the best consumer technology they use every day. Funding your wallet is one of the most common actions within Ziina, so making that experience faster and more seamless was a natural next step for us. Working with Lean, we've been able to reduce friction in a way that makes managing and moving money feel more effortless for our users." 

The announcement was made at Pay by Bank: The Default Way to Pay, Lean's flagship industry event, which brought together more than 150 leaders from across banking, fintech, commerce, and regulation to discuss the future of account-to-account payments in the UAE and wider region.