SILQ secures $20 million financing facility from Gemcorp

SILQ, the Saudi B2B e-commerce and fintech platform, has secured a 20 million dollar Shariah compliant structured financing facility from Gemcorp Capital, marking the emerging markets asset manager's first ever direct lending transaction in the kingdom. The deal is designed to expand embedded financial services for small and medium sized enterprises across Saudi Arabia, channeling fresh capital into a segment the government has repeatedly identified as central to its economic diversification goals. SILQ itself is the product of a merger between Saudi B2B marketplace Sary and Bangladesh based e-commerce platform ShopUp, a combination that closed in April 2025 backed by 110 million dollars in equity and debt led by Sanabil Investments and Valar Ventures. Today the company operates through two main products, Sary, its procurement and B2B enablement platform, and Fina, its embedded finance arm, which together serve more than 50,000 businesses across Saudi Arabia. According to the company, its combined ecosystem has enabled more than SAR 10 billion in B2B commerce so far in 2026, giving it a fairly substantial base of merchant activity to build embedded lending products around. The new financing will flow specifically through Fina, expanding its ability to offer invoice financing, trade finance, and other embedded financial products directly to the SMEs that already use SILQ's platforms for procurement and payments. The logic behind embedded finance is fairly straightforward, businesses get access to credit and working capital tools built directly into the software they already use to run daily operations, rather than having to seek out financing through separate, often slower moving bank channels. For Gemcorp, the deal represents a set of firsts in the kingdom, its first direct lending transaction, first Shariah compliant financing structure, and first mezzanine facility in Saudi Arabia, according to Petar Ivanovic, principal at the firm. Ivanovic described the transaction as one built behind a business Gemcorp holds strong conviction in, with the facility specifically dedicated to expanding Fina's embedded financial services across SILQ's merchant base. SILQ founder and chief executive Afeef Zaman framed the partnership as a way to strengthen the company's ability to expand financial inclusion for SMEs across Saudi Arabia while continuing to build out the financial infrastructure underpinning the next generation of B2B commerce in the kingdom. That framing lines up closely with Saudi Arabia's own stated policy goals, the government has said it wants small and medium enterprises to raise their contribution to GDP from roughly 20 percent to 35 percent by 2030, and has directed financial institutions to allocate at least 20 percent of their loan portfolios to smaller firms as part of that push. Notably, this Gemcorp facility was not SILQ's only recent debt raise. The company also secured a separate 75 million dollar Shariah compliant debt facility from London based investment firm Fasanara Capital, also channeled through Fina to fund working capital loans for small businesses. Fasanara has been active in the Saudi fintech lending space more broadly, having entered the market in early 2025 with a 60 million dollar securitisation facility for peer to peer lending platform Forus, and later signing an agreement with Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Investment to scale local fintech enabled lending initiatives to more than SAR 3 billion. Taken together, the back to back debt facilities from Gemcorp and Fasanara point to SILQ aggressively building out its lending capacity to meet what appears to be substantial unmet demand among Saudi SMEs for flexible, accessible credit. For the broader Gulf fintech landscape, this deal signals something beyond just one company's growth story. Gemcorp's decision to structure its first Saudi transaction specifically around Shariah compliance reflects how seriously international private credit managers are now treating Islamic finance requirements as a baseline expectation rather than a niche add on when entering the Saudi market. It also reflects a broader trend of international capital providers, rather than only local banks, stepping in to fund the embedded finance and alternative SME lending space across Saudi Arabia and the UAE, as regulators in both markets continue pushing conventional banks to expand SME lending while fintechs increasingly fill financing gaps that traditional credit underwriting has historically struggled to serve. As more Gulf economies lean on their SME sectors to diversify away from oil dependent growth, deals structured like SILQ's are likely to become a more common financing pattern, pairing embedded finance platforms with specialist private credit managers willing to underwrite risk that conventional banks are still cautious about taking on directly.