Raqamyah, the KSA-based fintech Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending platform, has secured a $2.3 million 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.

“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.”

Ammar Bakheet, Founder, Raqamyah

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.

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.

Basmah Alsinaidi of Impact46 VC said, “Prospects of growth for a company considering developments in the Fintech scene in Saudi are exciting. We have great faith in Ammar and his team to pave the way in this front”.

Kais Al Essa, Founding Partner and CEO of Vision Ventures added, “SMEs are one of the main pillars of any economy and the region is no different. SMEs need funding to expand and prosper and Raqamyah is here to support SMEs in their growth journey. We believe Raqamyah’s team is well equipped to lead this space.”