Saudi fintech and peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform Raqamyah has secured a US$2.3 million investment round that is expected to support its Islamic financing offerings to SMEs in the Kingdom.
Raqamyah, which provides Shariah compliant financing structured under the Murabahah concept, will utilize the funds raised to invest in technology and talent, expand its product offerings to SMEs and facilitate alternative investment opportunities for investors. The start-up said it will have a special focus on using technology to enhance credit assessment processes as a way to reduce origination cost and improve the borrowers’ experience.
“P2P lending is one of the fastest-growing areas in fintech but it is at its early stages in terms of innovation and disruption. The way forward will be full of technological developments,” Ammar Bakheet, the founder of Raqamyah, said.
The investment round was led by asset management company Impact46, with participation from angel investors and venture capital and investment firms Vision Ventures, Mad’a Investment, AlYusur Company and Fadeed Investment.
Raqamyah had started out in 2019, after securing a regulatory sandbox permit from the central bank, as a lending platform for micro enterprises with an automatic feature enabling lenders to select automatic investment options based on their own lending criteria. It later opened up to SMEs as the coronavirus crisis began.
In January this year, the fintech start-up debuted its POS [point-of-sale] Lending service, which allows SMEs to acquire loans from the platform and pay their monthly instalments through sales recorded on their POS machine. The first POS Lending facility posted that month was fully funded by the automatic lending product and was oversubscribed by SAR2 million (US$532,996).