Islamic Finance Daily Brief — Sunday, November 1, 2026

What to learn: The problem this platform addresses starts with a small business owner who needs stock or equipment and has no property to offer as security. A conventional bank often turns that owner away, because its lending decision rests on collateral and a formal credit history. Michuu-Mizan changes the basis of the decision. Kifiya's system reads business data, such as transaction records, and uses that data to assess whether the business can repay. That assessment is the technology at the centre of the launch. Kifiya's scoring uses alternative data instead of a formal credit file. The model reads mobile transactions, business performance, and other digital footprints, and judges repayment from real-time business activity — how regularly money comes in and whether the business can cover repayments — rather than from property or past loans. The financing itself follows Murabaha, which was explained in the Oct 8 edition. The bank buys goods on the business owner's behalf, and the owner repays the cost plus an agreed profit margin over time. The platform adds a marketplace, Halal Market, linked to Halalgebeya, so the owner can also find verified suppliers for those goods. The people who run it are the bank, which supplies the financing, and Kifiya, which supplies the scoring and digital systems, under a Shariah Advisory Board endorsement presented at the launch. The pilot numbers give a sense of scale. ETB 200 million divided by 4,000 businesses equals ETB 50,000 per business on average, roughly $309. The change for a woman running a small shop is direct. She can seek financing up to ETB 100,000 (roughly $617) under Yusra without property as security, and she can buy stock through a supplier marketplace in the same system. In the USA, a small business owner in the same position applies for a conventional bank loan or a fintech loan that charges interest. A Shariah-compliant, collateral-free, AI-scored product of this kind is not a standard product at US banks.

🔗 Source: Cooperative Bank of Oromia

What to learn: AdalFi does not lend its own money. It supplies the technology that helps partner banks decide who can borrow. Its models read a borrower's bank transaction data, score the borrower's cash flow, and automate approvals and disbursements. The banks supply the capital and keep the loans on their own books, while AdalFi earns a share of the income and bears part of the credit risk. That split is the business model. A regular credit score looks at a borrower's past loans and repayments on file, while a cash-flow score looks at the money actually moving through the bank account, so a borrower with no loan history can still be scored. The company reports that more than Rs110 billion (roughly $397 million) has been lent through its platform across nine banks, including six of Pakistan's ten largest banks, to more than 130,000 borrowers, with daily lending now above Rs200 million (roughly $722,000). It reports a default rate of about 0.2%, measured on loans more than 90 days past due. The human story sits in that borrower count. More than half of those borrowers were accessing formal credit for the first time, which means a shopkeeper or small trader who had a bank account and regular transactions, but no salary slip or collateral file, could still be assessed from the record of money moving through the account. The listing matters because it would put new capital into that model and put a fintech on a stock exchange long dominated by banks, cement, and textiles. In September, AdalFi also signed an agreement with Saudi Finance Company to test cash-flow credit scoring using transaction data accessed through regulated open-banking channels, with lending decisions staying with the Saudi provider. In the USA, fintech lenders also score borrowers from bank transaction data, through services linked to account data. The difference here is the purpose of the new capital: expanding Islamic financing and small-business lending through partner banks.

🔗 Source: FWDstart