The Saudi-based FinTech working to decentralize, automate, and foolproof corporate spending SiFi raises funds led by Khwarizmi Ventures to launch its Corporate Financial Services.
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Saudi-based FinTech and Simplified Financial Solutions Company (SiFi) has raised an undisclosed amount in its latest fundraise. The Pre-Seed funding round was led by Khwarizmi Ventures (KV), with participation from Breyer Capital (BC) and other angel investors, to launch its products and services.
Based in Saudi, SiFi was founded in 2021 by Ahmed AlHakbani (Founder and CEO) and is currently in its pre-launch stage. The FinTech startup set forth to manage corporate spending by designing intricate and automated financial solutions that include issuing corporate cards which will control and identify corporate spending by any team member in the company. The CaaS (Cards-as-a-service) proposition not only decentralizes and speeds up the corporate spending process, but also provides opportunities for automation, and creates a safer alternative to personal and company credit/debit card usage.
The FinTech space across EVMs has observed an exceptional VC funding growth in 2021 as recorded in our Startup Funding- 2022 Emerging Venture Markets Free Report, available for download. Recording more than 540% increase in capital investment in the sector over 2021, driven by 5 FinTech Mega Deals across Africa, the FinTech sector has had diverse focuses across different markets. When considering FinTech innovations in markets like Egypt or Nigeria, one of the main drivers of market entry has been servicing large populations of the unbanked and setting up payment infrastructures that work. In Egypt, FinTech alternatives like Dopay are providing Tech-powered solutions to roll out salaries for noncard holders while startups like Paymob are providing businesses with tools to facilitate offline and online payments from customers. In more established markets like the UAE and KSA, FinTech has been a great driver of innovation setting up for the infrastructure of the future with startups like BitOasis, Rasan Information Technology, FinTech Galaxy, Sarwa, and Tabby raising major rounds in 2021.
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As SMEs struggle to control and manage their corporate spending and expenses, they use a combination of personally-owned debit cards, hard-to-manage petty cash, cumbersome expense claims review, and manual accounting entries. This practice leads to challenges ranging from reduced visibility and control to time-consuming budgeting and accounting overheads and errors.
SiFi aims to empower companies from startups and SMEs to government and large enterprises to manage their expenses with better visibility and savings. It offers a Financial Management Solution to issue virtual and physical corporate cards with built-in rules, manage spending, automate expense reporting, and reconcile accounting automatically through built-in integration capabilities with major accounting systems. “We aim to democratize the corporate card and have it accessible to all corporates and government entities to manage their expenses effectively. There are many use cases we could solve with the use of corporate cards, and we’ll make sure that SiFi is a market leader in this space.” - Ahmed AlHakbani, Founder & CEO of SiFi.
The Saudi-based FinTech will be able to channel its newly acquired funds in supporting the launches of its services and further exploring new market possibilities. In light of this platform-launching investment, Yasser AlKadi, Founding Partner at Khwarizmi Ventures concluded, “With the continuous growth of cashless payments in Saudi along with the national direction for digital adoption, we see SiFi tackling the underlying challenges by simplifying financial management for different entities in Saudi and beyond."
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