IslamicFinance.de

Islamic fintech firms in the Southeast Asian region are providing digital services with wide appeal. The services—especially peer-to-peer financing and crowdfunding—can easily be used by the world’s 1.9 billion Muslims, and the tech-savvy firms are able to compete well with conventional Islamic banks. For example, Alami has a sharia-compliant P2P service to link funders with small and medium-sized businesses in Indonesia. So far, the company has steered P2P funding into over 30 businesses and is recruiting for expansion. Ethis operates a variety of sharia-compliant crowdfunding platforms. Its Indonesian housing venture has built over 8,000 low-cost homes with investments from 65 countries, and a new Ethis platform now provides crowdfunding for real estate projects in Dubai. Two other promising firms are Investree, a P2P marketplace for a range of business financing needs, and Ammana, with similar services.

Indonesian P2P firm Investree expects to close a Series B funding round in two to three months to finance the company’s marketing activities and expansion. Investree chairman Adrian Gunadi said that the investment would not only boost the company’s core business but also its new sharia product and online government securities business. The firm is hoping to capitalize on its large lender base, made up predominantly of the country’s millennials aged 21-35. Since its inception in 2016, Investree facilitated Rp 623 billion in loans. From the Rp 623 billion, around Rp 500 billion has been disbursed and Rp 367 billion has been paid back. So there’s around Rp 120 billion in outstanding loans. Investree plans to offer a new asset class on its platform, that of retail online government securities. The initiative will start either in April or May, they are currently waiting for confirmation from the Finance Ministry.