In Saudi Arabia, there has been a long-standing push to modernize payments, improve settlement speed, and diversify the economy.
Blockchain is seen as a foundation for national financial systems, including real estate markets and capital settlement. Saudi Arabia’s government is in a small group across the world treating tokenisation as infrastructure, rather than mere experimentation.
Digital payments
Saudi Arabia’s current position in blockchain began with a payments reform that started around 2004, when Faisal Monai designed SADAD (the country’s digital payments system). The kingdom moved away from cash-heavy systems toward digital rails connecting banks, billers, and government services. This made large-scale transaction systems familiar territory for regulators and institutions. Before then, around “70% of bill payments were paid in cash at physical branches” (per CoinDesk).
Basic payments required physical queues and manual processing. Once the modernized systems were introduced, billions of transactions began flowing through digital channels each year.
Blockchain integration depends on similar coordination between banks, regulators, and settlement layers. Monai, who played an important role in Saudi Arabia’s payments transformation, has moved into blockchain-based asset systems. In a recent interview, he said the country is preparing for a structural shift in financial infrastructure. As he put it, the country will demonstrate that “sovereign-grade tokenization can function as core national financial infrastructure” by 2030, while, he predicted, the rest of the world will still be debating the topic.
Outside this institutional focus, crypto tools such as a crypto credit card or crypto debit cardexist in the Saudi market (as well as those in European countries such as Serbia); they are in a different category of adoption and are not part of Saudi Arabia’s current infrastructure agenda.
Tokenization
The most active area of development is real-world asset tokenisation. Real estate has become the first large-scale test case.
Real estate may be a particular focus in the coming years. In the official financial report from 2025, the government stated that real estate recorded a low “asset turnover at 0.1”. It said the housing market had undergone significant development under the 2030 program and is aiming to increase homeownership to 70%. It sat at 65.4% in 2024, which exceeded the government’s target for that year (64%).
Image courtesy: EM’s Magnific | Edited and cropped by GBN
Through droppRWA, Monai and his team have secured $12.5 billion in mandates aimed at moving property ownership records and settlement processes onto blockchain systems.
A February 4 transaction showed that settlement times could reduce from days to seconds. It also showed that legal ownership frameworks can be connected to blockchain-based execution layers while still being regulated.
According to CoinDesk, Monai is exploring how these systems may extend into energy assets, industrial infrastructure, and sovereign investment zones. The goal appears to be to create markets where ownership, transfer, and collateralization can occur with fewer delays.
Infrastructure scale and market pressure
Global tokenized treasury markets have expanded into the tens of billions of US dollars; stablecoin settlement volumes have reached multi-trillion-dollar annual levels. The figures are relevant to Saudi Arabia because the country manages large cross-border investment flows and sovereign wealth allocations.
The focus appears to be on improving settlement infrastructure and operational resilience rather than necessarily replacing existing financial systems. Monai and the government aim to create faster, more reliable mechanisms for ownership, transfer, and settlement.
Resilience during economic shocks
The argument for crypto is often that traditional financial systems can slow down during periods of geopolitical stress, market closures, or banking restrictions. Tokenized systems, if properly regulated, may offer more continuous settlement capabilities.
This perspective became more prominent during periods of regional instability. Market participants observed that digital asset networks continued operating even when traditional exchanges were closed. That behaviour highlighted a gap between traditional systems and always-on infrastructure.
Saudi officials are not framing this as a replacement of existing systems. They are focusing on systems that can operate alongside conventional banking. That includes maintaining alignment with the US dollar system while adding faster settlement options for specific asset classes.
Image courtesy: EM’s Magnific | Edited and cropped by GBN
Stablecoins
Stablecoinsare reportedly central to Saudi Arabia’s blockchain roadmap, but the approach is cautious. Developers can partner with the Capital Market Authority and the central bank to receive global capital (in minutes, rather than days) under regulation. Stablecoin settlement is due to go live by the end of this year.
The expectation is that stablecoin-based settlement could support real estate transactions and cross-border investment flows under regulated frameworks. This would allow capital to move into property and infrastructure projects more quickly, while still being recorded within legal systems.
Takeaway
Real estate tokenisation may expand into broader asset classes, while settlement systems will be tested across different regulatory environments. The long-term goal is a unified infrastructure where digital and traditional finance operate in parallel without friction between them.
If the country’s plans remain on track, Saudi Arabia will act as one of the first large economies to operate tokenisation at national scale. That would place it at the centre of a development in how financial systems are structured, largely through the integration of blockchain.
