Islamic Development Bank Teams With FinTech Startup To Develop Blockchain Solutions

The Islamic Corporation for the Development of Private Sector (ICD) is collaborating with Tunisian startup I-FinTech Solutions (IFTS) to develop FinTech and blockchain solutions for Islamic banks worldwide.

ICD, the private sector arm of Islamic Development Bank Group (IsDB), operates as a multilateral development financial institution for the development of its member countries. It offers finance for private sector projects, promoting competition and entrepreneurship, providing advisory services to the governments and private companies, and encouraging cross border investments.

IFTS is an advisory firm that provides alternative financial solutions. It services include consultancy & advisory in Islamic finance and financial technology, and executive training in the Islamic finance industry in collaboration with its sister company the International Islamic Finance Training Institute (IIFTI).

The partnership between ICD and IFTS involves a pipeline of FinTech products that will be developed and implemented to mainly solve the liquidity management issues. The first product is a blockchain-based transactional platform that will facilitate transacting of real commodities. The platform will be designed to solve the inter-banking issues between conventional and Islamic banks in a Sharia compliant way. It will leverage blockchain technology to reduce both the overall execution time and cost of financial and commercial transaction, as well as address the issues and challenges related to transparency and traceability of financial transactions.

“IT will always play an important role for the financial system,” said Ayman Sejiny, CEO of ICD. “We will consistently pursue our strategy of service orientation and help our partners with innovative Sharia compliant FinTech solutions.”

“We are keen to work with ICD in the FinTech industry to promote the i-Trade Platform and help the banking sector through providing innovative solution to operate and supply better services for the final user and clients,” said Mohamed Anouar Gadhoum, CEO-Founder of IFTS.