DarbWho is Saudi Arabia's biggest card issuer?
Card count doesn't tell the whole story. Debit-card scale, credit-card spending and the mix of spending reveal very different banking businesses.
Abdulmohsen Al Babtain, Founder & CEO of Darb
Who is Saudi Arabia's biggest card issuer?
If you work in payments here, you already know Al Rajhi is big. That isn't news to anyone.
Here's the part I didn't know.
Al Rajhi isn't just the biggest debit card issuer in Saudi Arabia. It's the biggest in the Middle East and Africa. The whole region, nineteen countries, ahead of every bank in the UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa.
Second place is Kuwait Finance House, and it isn't close. Saudi National Bank is third. SAB is ninth. Three of the ten biggest debit card issuers in the region are Saudi banks.
Now the question I would have got wrong.
Who is the biggest credit card issuer in Saudi Arabia?
If you said Al Rajhi, so did I. It isn't.
By credit-card spending, it's SAB.
And SAB doesn't just edge ahead. Al Rajhi has 2.8 million credit cards. SAB has 670,000. Four times the cards, and about half the spending.
Average annual spending per credit card
Reported Saudi banks, ranked by average annual spending on each credit card in 2025.
SAB leads the six reported banks in average annual spending per credit card. This measures spend per card—not the number of cards issued; it does not establish which bank issued the most cards. SAB’s reported average is approximately 8.3× Al Rajhi’s. The comparison is average annual spending per credit card, not card issuance.
View accessible data table
| Bank / market | Average annual spending per credit card | Credit share of total card spend |
|---|---|---|
| SAB | 54,893 SAR | 48% |
| SNB | 34,590 SAR | 31% |
| Bank Aljazira | 24,375 SAR | 28% |
| Riyad Bank | 9,788 SAR | 26% |
| ANB | 9,304 SAR | 17% |
| Al Rajhi | 6,615 SAR | 13% |
That's the part worth stopping on. The average SAB credit card gets used for around SAR 55,000 of spending a year. The average Al Rajhi credit card gets used for about SAR 6,600.
Eight times the difference, in the same country, on the same networks.
It isn't that Al Rajhi doesn't do credit cards. It issues more of them than anyone in the Kingdom. They just sit in wallets.
I think it comes down to who each bank is banking.
Al Rajhi banks the country. Twelve million cards. If you draw a salary in Saudi Arabia, there's a good chance it lands there. A credit card in that book is something you get offered when you open an account, not something you build your spending around.
SAB banks a much narrower group. Large corporates, international companies, higher earners. Far fewer cards, and each one works much harder.
Neither is wrong. Banking twelve million people is a real business. So is banking a small number of large companies properly. They're just different businesses, and the card numbers show it plainly.
Credit share of each bank’s total card spend
Credit-card spend as a share of each bank’s total card spend, for the six reported Saudi banks.
View accessible data table
| Bank / market | Average annual spending per credit card | Credit share of total card spend |
|---|---|---|
| SAB | 54,893 SAR | 48% |
| SNB | 34,590 SAR | 31% |
| Bank Aljazira | 24,375 SAR | 28% |
| Riyad Bank | 9,788 SAR | 26% |
| ANB | 9,304 SAR | 17% |
| Al Rajhi | 6,615 SAR | 13% |
You can see it in the mix too. At SAB, credit is nearly half of all card spending. At Al Rajhi, it's about one riyal in eight.
Then I got curious about whether this is a Saudi thing or a Gulf thing.
It's neither.
Credit cards’ share of total card spend
Credit-card spend as a share of total card spend in the reported markets.
US: January–June 2026, across all issuers. Gulf markets: 2025, issuers ranked in Nilson’s Middle East & Africa top 50. This is not a full-market census. Different periods and coverage make this comparison indicative, not directly like for like.
View accessible data table
| Bank / market | Measure | Supplied value |
|---|---|---|
| UAE | Credit share of total card spend | 59% |
| United States* | Credit share of total card spend | 56% |
| Saudi Arabia | Credit share of total card spend | 26% |
| Kuwait | Credit share of total card spend | 9% |
In the UAE, credit is close to 60% of card spending, which is roughly where the United States sits. In Saudi Arabia it's about a quarter. In Kuwait it's under 10%.
Three Gulf countries, three completely different answers. So there's no regional rule at work here. Whatever is holding credit back in Saudi Arabia, it isn't geography, and it isn't something inherent to the Gulf. A neighbour has already built what people assume can't be built here.
I don't know why, and I'd rather say that than invent a reason. Islamic banking product design, the mix of expatriate and local customers, plain credit culture — all plausible, none of them proven by this data. All I know is that this presents a massive opportunity to influence credit card contribution in Saudi Arabia.
More soon.
— Abdulmohsen