Salla, a Saudi e-commerce platform that lets merchants build and run online stores, acquired Paylink, a Saudi payments company licensed by the country's central bank, the companies announced on September 4, 2026. Terms were not disclosed, and neither side gave a price or said how the purchase was paid for.
Salla said it would connect Paylink's payment infrastructure to its own commerce platform so that merchants can accept and manage payments both online and in physical shops. It plans to use the deal to widen its point-of-sale offering, including SoftPOS, and to support international payments in several currencies.
The announcement did not say whether Paylink will keep its brand, how its founders and staff will fit into Salla, or whether the deal required further regulatory approval.
What Paylink built
Paylink was founded in 2017 by Ammar AlTwaijri and Abdulelah Alsayegh. It provides electronic payment services for businesses and merchants in Saudi Arabia and holds a licence from the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) to offer e-commerce payment services. It also carries the "Saudi Tech" label.
Over the years the company built its own technical infrastructure for processing online payments. According to Salla, that infrastructure can handle international sales, several currencies and a range of payment methods, which is the part of the business the buyer has highlighted most.
Paylink did not disclose how many merchants use it, how much payment volume it processes, how many people it employs or whether it raised outside funding.
“Since Salla's inception, our goal has been to enable merchants to build and grow their businesses through an integrated ecosystem that reduces complexity and provides them with the tools they need to grow. We believe that financial services are a natural extension of this vision; our acquisition of Paylink adds important capabilities and expertise to Salla that will help us build smarter and more integrated payment solutions and enable our merchants to receive payments wherever their customers are, whether online or at points of sale, inside and outside the Kingdom.”
Why Salla is buying
Salla has built its business on store-building software and tools for running orders and operations. With Paylink it is moving further into financial services, a step it described as part of a plan to support merchants at each stage of their growth rather than only helping them sell.
The most concrete plan is in physical retail. SoftPOS technology lets a merchant accept card payments on a compatible phone or device without a dedicated terminal. Salla said combining the two companies would let it offer payment acceptance wherever a sale happens, whether on a website or in a store.
The second aim is cross-border trade. Salla said Paylink's ability to handle foreign currencies and payment methods would help Saudi brands reach customers outside the kingdom and grow regionally and globally.
The buyer
Salla describes itself as the leading Saudi platform for e-commerce solutions. Sharikat Mubasher reported that the acquisition adds payment infrastructure to an ecosystem of more than 65,000 merchants.
Founder and chief executive Nawaf Hariri said financial services were a natural extension of the company's goal of making it simpler for merchants to build and grow their businesses. He said Paylink brought capabilities and expertise that would let Salla build smarter, more integrated payment products.
Salla presented the deal as a combination of its own experience with tens of thousands of merchants and the technical and regulatory knowledge Paylink had built up in payments.
Sharikat Mubasher, reporting from Riyadh on September 7, said the purchase was part of Salla's strategy of widening its financial services to build a more integrated set of tools for merchants, covering payment acceptance and management across online stores and physical points of sale.
Commerce platforms move into payments
Owning a licensed payments company gives an e-commerce platform direct control over how its merchants get paid, rather than relying entirely on outside providers. In Saudi Arabia, where SAMA licenses e-commerce payment providers, buying a company that already holds such a licence is one way to add that capability.
Salla said the acquisition reflected continued investment in infrastructure linking commerce, payments and financial services, aimed at helping Saudi brands grow at home and expand into new markets. It did not give a timeline for launching the SoftPOS or cross-border products, or say whether Paylink's existing merchants outside the Salla platform will continue to be served on the same terms.
