Fawaz Ghazal, CEO & Co-Founder, FLOOSS Group

FLOOSS began operations in the Kingdom of Bahrain in 2023. It’s the first consumer digital microfinancing company in the Kingdom, providing consumers with Sharia-compliant loans instantly, within minutes. We started with cash loans in 2023, then added products like Buy Now, Pay Later and a marketplace. By the end of this year, we’re launching further products such as travel insurance.

We hold our own financing license in the Kingdom of Bahrain, and we secured our license in Saudi Arabia in August 2025. We’ve started our soft launch in KSA and expect our official launch, with a marketing campaign, by the end of this year. We’re also in the process of launching in the United Arab Emirates.

A few things stand out. First, our team — the people in our organization being innovative and creative. Second, we own our own IP rights; we’ve built our own technology in-house, which matters as we launch FLOOSS in different markets. Third, local customization of our services in each jurisdiction — understanding the local appetite and customizing our products accordingly.

Our hero product is cash loans. Customers like having cash in hand, and we transfer that amount directly. We use AI and machine learning in our credit scoring models, continuously enhancing them to increase acceptance rates and reduce default rates.

We also collect a lot of data. In Bahrain, there’s significant digital data provided by the government that we can use — eKYC, open banking, credit bureau information, and more. The same is happening in the UAE and Saudi Arabia; every government in the GCC is digitizing services, enabling a fully digital customer experience with minimal friction.

We started with cash loans, then added Buy Now, Pay Later, which is also a Sharia-compliant product. Then came Souq, our marketplace, where customers can buy devices, equipment, furniture, and appliances on installments.

We believe embedded finance is going to keep growing, so we’re moving into different sectors and looking at how to spread payments out over time instead of a single lump-sum payment. That’s why we’re moving into insurance — travel insurance launches in a week, so customers can book flights or other travel and we provide a loan over 12 months, so travel happens seamlessly without a separate loan application. After that, we’re looking at insurance more broadly and the education sector, and finally embedded finance at checkout, so financing beyond standard Buy Now, Pay Later will be available directly on e-commerce checkout pages.

On the technology side, AI is a major focus for us. It helps reduce our operational costs and gives us the capacity to serve more customers with our current resources.

This is part of our roadmap. Education is a high-ticket expense — paying for school fees or professional courses is usually a large lump sum. We’re looking at how to help customers spread that cost over 12 to 18 months, so instead of paying $2,000–$5,000 in a single month, it becomes something closer to $500 a month.

This is something we’re actively working on, though it hasn’t launched yet. Philosophically, we believe in responsible lending: we want to help customers borrow for needs rather than wants, and education is a clear example of a need that develops a person and helps increase their income over time.

We have a full engineering team, and everything at FLOOSS is developed in-house. Over the last six to eight months, we’ve started using AI in our own coding — AI agents work alongside our engineers to enhance code and increase our development capacity.

We now work in two-week sprints, releasing new functions and platform changes every two weeks. We’re also increasing our ability to run experiments and A/B tests to see what works in the market. At the same time, we’ve adopted an MVP mentality across teams — every part of the business tests minimal viable products to check what works and what doesn’t. Ideas like education and insurance came out of that process, with our teams running experiments on them.

We believe the more we experiment in the market, the better we understand our customers and the feedback we get across different channels. On the AI and machine learning side, we’re applying it across every part of our operations — customer care, credit scoring, marketing, development, and finance. This started over the last two quarters, and we see it as a continuous process of improving our operational efficiency.

Most of our customers are millennials and Gen Z — the kind of customers who want a mobile-app experience and don’t want to talk to a bank. I think we’ve addressed that pain point well: when someone needs instant credit at 2 a.m. on a Sunday night because they need $1,000 or $2,000 immediately for an emergency, we’re there for them.

We help bridge financing needs — customers can go to a bank for larger amounts, but we help with emergency cash needs. That keeps them from turning to bad options, like informal high-interest lenders, when they can’t otherwise manage. So we help reduce the anxiety that comes with not having funds available, and help them find a solution to the problem.

We already work with a lot of partners. Right now, we work with telcos — all three telcos in the region. We also work with large retailers to provide their goods and services. As we expand into larger markets like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, we want to work with international retailers and players too, to provide embedded finance for their customers as part of becoming the regional player for these services.

In the GCC, the Gulf’s six-nation economic bloc, the two largest markets are Saudi Arabia and the UAE — we already have a license in Saudi Arabia and an entity in the UAE. Beyond that, we’re looking at Oman and Qatar as potential expansion markets, depending on regulation. If that allows us to expand, Egypt is a potential market within the next two years.

We want to be the brand of choice for empowering customers to solve their financial needs instantly. We’re aiming to be seen not just as a lending company, but as a company that empowers people around their financial needs.

For consumers: lending is a great product to be used in the right way — like any tool, use it wisely, and it will help you through difficult times. For our financial partners: we’re on a journey of innovation and creativity, and we’re looking for partners who want to join us on that journey. We’ll keep developing and enhancing our products and services — there’s no end point where we stop.