Raqamyah raises $2.3M Pre-Series A round

Raqamyah, the KSA-based Fintech Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending platform, has secured a $2.3M Pre-Series A funding round. The investment was led by Impact46 with participation from Vision Ventures, Mad’a Investment, Alyusur Company, Fadeed Investment, and strategic angel investors.

Founded by Ammar Bakheet, Raqamyah obtained SAMA Sandbox approval in July 2019 to operate a P2P lending platform connecting qualified SMEs seeking different types of financing products and individual/institutional lenders looking for an alternative investment with higher Murabaha returns. The startup has stated that it is the first P2P platform to introduce an automatic lending feature where lenders can choose to set automatic investment options based on their lending criteria.

During the COVID-19 lockdown, the platform expanded from lending to micro-enterprises only to SMEs. It also launched a POS lending service is in partnership with Skyband, allowing SMEs to acquire loans from Raqamyah and pay their monthly installments through sales recorded on the point-of-sale machine. The first POS loan posted in January 2021 was oversubscribed by SAR 2M, the startup states, and was fully funded by the automatic lending tool.

Ammar Bakheet, Founder of Raqamyah commented that P2P lending is one of the fastest-growing areas in Fintech, is currently at the early stages in terms of innovation and disruption, and the way forward will be full of technological developments.

Raqamyah plans to heavily invest in technology and talents to make platform users’ experience superior. It will also focus on innovation in credit assessment techniques and expanding its offering of loan products to SMEs.

The funding aims to support the company meeting SAMA’s full license requirements and facilitate easier access to alternative investment opportunities for investors.