Wafr, a financial technology company building a global Islamic financial platform, has announced the launch of WafrChain, its first product, alongside the completion of its pre-seed funding round. Sukuk tokenisation is now live on the platform, which brings issuance, distribution, settlement, and profit payments for Shariah-compliant sukuk onto a single institutional system. The company did not disclose the size of the round.
The funding includes individual investments from Coen Jonker, co-founder of Tyme Group and a former Group Executive at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and Neal Cross, co-founder of PictureWealth and former Chief Innovation Officer of DBS Bank. Wafr’s co-founding team brings experience in Islamic banking, GCC banking advisory, and digital banking product launches at AMP, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and Macquarie Bank.
Sukuk are among the more complex Islamic finance instruments to bring to market. According to Wafr, a single issuance typically involves eight separate parties, namely the issuer, trustee, arrangers, Shariah board, custodians, paying agent, distributors, and investors, each maintaining its own record of the same instrument. Transfers, profit payments, and corporate actions are re-keyed and reconciled between them, adding cost, delay, and the risk of error. As a result, an issuance can take many months, and in some cases more than a year, to reach the market.
How WafrChain works
WafrChain is a private, permissioned blockchain designed to connect the institutions involved in the sukuk lifecycle through a shared record. Instrument terms, including unit price, profit schedule, and maturity, are recorded on-chain together with the approval of the issuer’s own Shariah board before distribution. Wafr’s Shariah board works with each issuer to confirm that the structure is compliant.
The platform connects issuers with distributors and institutional buyers, and uses smart contracts to route profit payments. Settlement can be carried out in fiat currency, via local real-time gross settlement (RTGS) systems and SWIFT, or in stablecoins. Institutions can integrate WafrChain with existing systems through a single API.
On performance and confidentiality, the company states that transactions reach finality in 300 milliseconds and that each participant can see only its own activity, meaning issuers, distributors, and investors keep their positions private from one another. The network is also designed to continue operating with only a third of its nodes active.
Market context and roadmap
According to the ICD–LSEG Islamic Finance Development Report 2026, global Islamic finance assets reached USD 6.5 trillion in 2025, up 9% year on year. Sukuk outstanding stood at USD 1.14 trillion, while annual issuance rose 14.5% to USD 291.4 billion.
The company described WafrChain as a starting point for institutions bringing Shariah-compliant assets on-chain, while Wafr develops services for individuals and businesses managing their finances across borders. Furthermore, it also positions its platform as rooted in Shariah-compliant principles while remaining open to users of all faiths.
Beyond sukuk, Wafr’s institutional roadmap covers fund tokenisation, tokenised deposits, trade finance, and business-to-business settlement. Its consumer plans include global accounts, cross-border remittances and cards, with agentic AI and stablecoin-enabled settlement forming part of its wider development strategy. Wafr has said these plans are intended to expand financial access for unbanked and underserved communities. The sequencing places institutional infrastructure first, with consumer services to be introduced in line with applicable regulatory processes and approvals, working with licensed partners where required.
