Sberbank, the state-controlled financial giant in Russia, is going to acquire 25% stake in PayZakat, the bank stated without disclosing the financial details of the deal.
This Moscow-based startup has developed a payment platform to help Muslim users collect obligatory and voluntary alms. With the help of PayZakat’s bots in social networks, Muslim users can calculate their payments (Sadaqah, Zakat, Zakat al-Fitr, and Zakat al-Adha) and distribute them among charity foundations
They may also pick up projects for their alms to be given to, and receive updates via PayZakat.
Commenting on the deal, Oleg Ganeev, deputy chairman of Sberbank’s board, underlined that PayZakat “grew up inside Sberbank.” In 2018, PayZakat was among the winners of the bank’s Sber#Up accelerator program that was meant to encourage innovative business ideas among Sberbank’s personnel.
At that time, the payment startup received a capital injection of 5 million rubles (roughly $75,000) from the bank.
PayZakat was officially registered in October 2018. Most of its shares (67.5%) are owned by Behnam Gurbanzada who happens to be a counsellor to the deputy chairman of Sberbank’s board.
Gurbanzada was involved multilaterally in large corporations, banks and governmental projects in Azerbaijan, Russia and other countries of the region.
According to Sberbank, at present, Zakat collections globally are estimated to be well above $500 billion per year, with most of the alms being collected in cash. Since there are about 1.8 billion Muslims on the globe, including 80 million living in Russia and neighboring countries, the bank believes PayZakat has good chances to become a global payment system for alms collection.
