Save up to $190 on your pass to TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026. Early Bird pricing ends today, at 11:59 p.m. PT, after which rates increase. Register now.

IMAN Holdings has announced plans to raise $100mn to accelerate the development and expansion of its AI-powered Islamic banking platform, with a focus on entering GCC markets.

Founded in 2020, the Central Asia–based fintech company has developed a mobile-first financial ecosystem built around Shariah-compliant principles. Its platform integrates savings, investments, payments, and financial guidance within a single application, serving more than one million registered users and managing over $100 million in assets. The company has raised over $10 million from global investors and is targeting more than $250 million in assets by the end of 2026.

IMAN’s expansion comes at a time when the global Islamic finance industry, now exceeding $4 trillion in assets, is undergoing rapid transformation driven by digital adoption and changing user expectations. Younger, mobile-first users are increasingly seeking financial systems that are not only compliant, but also personalized, accessible, and aligned with their values.

Against this backdrop, IMAN is advancing a model built on artificial intelligence to redefine how financial services are delivered. Rather than relying on traditional interfaces such as dashboards and static tools, the platform is designed to interact with users conversationally, adapting to financial behavior, preferences, and life context in real time.

“The problem with banking is not access. It’s the way it was built. It was never designed to understand people,” said Rustam Rahmatov, Founder and Group CEO of IMAN Holdings.

This approach reflects a broader shift from transactional banking toward systems that provide ongoing financial guidance. By analyzing behavioral and transaction data, IMAN’s platform aims to anticipate user needs and support decision-making, moving beyond reactive services toward a more adaptive model.

The company is also embedding trust and transparency directly into its platform through real-time Shariah validation and visible compliance logic, positioning ethical finance as an integral part of the user experience.

“The future bank doesn’t react. It anticipates. And it does so with consent, transparency, and care,” said Shakhzod Shukurov, Co-Founder and Chief Risk and Data Officer.

Beyond its consumer offering, IMAN is building infrastructure to enable financial institutions to deploy AI-powered, Shariah-compliant products. This includes a RegTech and AI banking layer designed to scale across markets, supporting the development of a broader ecosystem for Islamic digital finance.

The opportunity is significant. With 1.9 billion Muslims globally and a persistent gap in accessible Islamic financial services, demand for intelligent, values-aligned banking continues to grow. At the same time, rapid digital adoption across the GCC is accelerating the shift toward mobile-first financial platforms.

IMAN’s planned expansion into the region reflects both market demand and strategic alignment. The GCC combines a well-established Islamic finance sector with strong momentum in fintech innovation, making it a key market for the company’s next phase of growth.

The post IMAN Holdings plans to raise $100M for GCC expansion appeared first on My Startup World - Everything About the World of Startups!.

Users will be able to access their watchlists, real-time market data, live financial news, and Google's AI-powered "Key Moments" feature, which explains why stocks moved.

American homeowners are sitting on trillions of dollars in home equity. At the same time, many of them are still paying credit card rates north of 20% to cover everyday expenses, home repairs, medical bills, and family purchases. Trovy thinks […]

The post Trovy raises $15 million Series A to replace high-interest debt with home equity financing first appeared on Tech Startups.

The Nordic region has produced a disproportionate number of the world’s most successful fintech companies. That success is not accidental. Across Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Norway, startups have consistently tackled the same core problem: too many steps between a user […]

The post The Fintech Blueprint: How Nordic Startups Eliminated Digital Friction to Accelerate Growth first appeared on Tech Startups.

Savannah, USA, 24th June 2026, FinanceWire

The post Bader Law Personal Injury Lawyers Examines Liability Framework for Tesla and EV Collisions Amid Georgia’s first appeared on Tech Startups.

Meta wants a piece of the prediction market boom. Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly assigned a small team inside Meta to build a smartphone app modeled on prediction platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi, according to a New York Times report published […]

The post Meta reportedly building prediction markets app called Arena to challenge Polymarket and Kalshi first appeared on Tech Startups.

Sovra, the fintech platform that provides people with a global dollar account, has raised more than $2 million in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Pharsalus Capital, with participation from leading regional and global angel investors, including Karim Atiyeh (founder of Ramp), Hisham Al-Falih (founder of Lean Technologies), Hany Rashwan (founder of 21shares), Naguib S. Sawiris (chairman of Orascom Development Holding AG) and other angel investors.

Directly from their mobile phones, Sovra users can hold digital dollars, earn yield, send money globally in seconds, and spend with a card that works anywhere. All from a self-custodial account that can only be accessed by the user, without interference from the platform or any intermediaries. This guarantees financial access to the account and longevity beyond the platform’s.

Sovra’s self-custodial architecture means users can have complete control of their own money, and the platform serves purely as infrastructure, not gatekeepers.

The platform integrates with a robust foundation of world-leading platforms to deliver a comprehensive fintech solution to users. Dollar balances are denominated in USDC, a regulated US dollar-based stablecoin issued by Circle, an NYSE-listed SEC-regulated company, and audited by Deloitte, where one real US dollar in reserve for every digital dollar in circulation, fully verifiable.

The platform also grants users access to a range of functionality for their digital dollars,  including the ability to connect to third-party DeFi protocols that offer yield, and card payments supported across the Visa and Mastercard networks, as well as free transfers across accounts.

Two-thirds of adults across MENA remain unbanked or underbanked. In some countries, even those with bank accounts can risk inflation, currency devaluation, withdrawal limits, and the possibility of losing access to their own money. As well as slow and expensive remittances, with charges of over 6% per transfer and often taking days to arrive.

Sovra is built for everyone who earns, saves, spends, or sends money — with three initial priority segments: young professionals across MENA, university students, and the regional diaspora globally.

Sovra was founded by Ahmad Wehbi, who watched Lebanon’s banking system fail in 2019, when bank deposits were frozen, and the national currency lost more than 98% of its value. The team brings together backgrounds across McKinsey, Revolut, Jumpcloud, decentralized finance, and the lived experience of disrupted access to finances and savings.

Ahmad Wehbi, Founder and CEO of Sovra, said: “There has always been something between people and their money;  a bank, a border, a fee, a policy, a form. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it took everything. The technology to remove the middleman now exists. Sovra is the simplest way in. Your money works for you and answers only to you. If we disappear tomorrow, it’s still there. That’s not a company policy alone, but the architecture we have built for Sovra.”

Anthony Ghosn, Managing Director, Pharsalus Capital, said: “By giving people sovereign, self-custodial alternatives to fragile fiat and banking systems, Sovra is helping restore financial dignity in Lebanon and beyond. For those of us with ties to the region, these issues are deeply familiar — and Ahmad and the Sovra team stand out for having the courage and clarity to build where others have been constrained by the scale of the problem.”

Sovra operates with a distributed team across the Middle East and Europe. The pre-seed round will fund engineering and product expansion as the company prepares for its public launch and continues building a platform. The waitlist is open at sovra.money

 

The post Sovra raises $2 million+ in pre-seed funding round appeared first on My Startup World - Everything About the World of Startups!.

BlackRock’s new ETF plans a 0.65% fee, lower than existing bitcoin covered-call funds.

Siiibo has supported over 100 bond offerings for more than 40 companies in Japan.