Digital payment systems were already on the mind of Saudi Arabia’s top tokenization platform chair Faisal Monai long before bitcoin was even created in 2009. He oversaw the digitization of the $4 trillion cash-heavy payment system of the Saudi Arabian kingdom by 2007.
Prior to the 2004 launch of SADAD, the digital payments system he developed for the Saudi Central Bank, over 70% of bill payments in the country were made in cash at physical branches. Even to pay an energy bill, people had to wait in line for hours. A single digital conduit connecting all of the banks in the oil-rich nation to all of the main billers was terminated by Monai.
In 2025, the system that Monai designed processed more than 14.5 billion transactions with a combined value of over $250 billion. He is famous throughout the Gulf area as the mastermind behind the financial infrastructure of the Saudi Kingdom.
Stablecoin Settlements and RWA Infrastructure
After successfully securing $12.5 billion in mandates to move RWAs onto the blockchain via droppRWA, Monai made a bold forecast in a long interview with a leading publication.
He predicted that Saudi Arabia would prove, by 2030, that sovereign-grade tokenization can serve as fundamental national financial infrastructure—something that the rest of the globe is currently arguing over.
According to the head of droppRWA, stablecoin settlement will be operational in the real estate market over the next four years. Several of the G20 countries will have followed Saudi Arabia’s lead in establishing regulatory frameworks and infrastructural models.
Midway through 2026, the stablecoin settlement market had a total market value of over $300 billion, with transaction volumes for 2025 surpassing $30 trillion, according to a research by the European Central Bank in May. Despite its relatively recent past, the tokenized market has a valuation of $25 billion.
He emphasized that the infrastructure issue would be resolved. More importantly, there is a difference between wrapping an asset and creating the market infrastructure that makes it investable.