UAE Fintech Wafr Raises Pre-Seed Round and Launches Blockchain Platform for Sukuk

The investors are individuals. They include Coen Jonker, co-founder of the digital bank Tyme Group and a former group executive at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and Neal Cross, former chief innovation officer of DBS Bank and co-founder of PictureWealth.

Wafr is going after the cost and slow pace of bringing sukuk, the Shariah-compliant equivalent of bonds, to market. According to the company, a typical issuance involves eight separate parties: the issuer, trustee, arrangers, Shariah board, custodians, paying agent, distributors and investors. Each keeps its own record of the same instrument. Every transfer and profit payment has to be re-keyed and reconciled between them, and an issuance can take many months, sometimes more than a year.

WafrChain gives those institutions a shared record. Instrument terms such as unit price, profit schedule and maturity are recorded on-chain, along with the issuer's Shariah board approval before distribution, while Wafr's own Shariah board works with each issuer on compliance. Smart contracts route profit payments. Settlement can run in fiat currency through local real-time gross settlement systems and SWIFT, or in stablecoins, and institutions connect through a single API.

The company said transactions reach finality in 300 milliseconds. Each participant sees only its own activity, and the network can keep running with only a third of its nodes active.

Wafr was co-founded by chief executive Mahmoud Bouchelif, a former Islamic banker who founded LeanTech SG, and chief product officer Anthony Murphy, who launched digital banking products at AMP, Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Macquarie Bank.

"WafrChain is our starting point, giving institutions a foundation for bringing Shariah-compliant assets on-chain while we develop the services people need to manage their financial lives across borders," Bouchelif said.

The company said it plans to add fund tokenisation, tokenised deposits, trade finance and business-to-business settlement for institutions. It later wants to offer consumers international accounts, cross-border remittances and payment cards, subject to regulatory approvals. It did not say which regulators it is working with or name any issuer using the platform.