• SILQ closed two Shariah-compliant debt facilities in nine days — $20 million from Gemcorp Capital on July 13 and $75 million from Fasanara Capital on July 22 — both routed through embedded-finance platform Fina.
• Gemcorp structured its piece as a mezzanine facility, its first in Saudi Arabia, meaning SILQ layered subordinated, higher-cost capital on top of a larger facility rather than relying on a single lender.
• The stack is collateralized by scale: SILQ says Sary and Fina served over 50,000 Saudi SMEs and ran SAR 10 billion — roughly $2.7 billion — in B2B commerce during 2026.
• Both facilities land 15 months after the $110 million round, led by PIF-backed Sanabil Investments and Valar Ventures, that funded the April 2025 merger of Sary and ShopUp into SILQ.
• Neither deal discloses tenor or pricing, so the actual cost of Gemcorp's mezzanine layer relative to Fasanara's larger facility remains unconfirmed.

SILQ closed a $20 million Shariah-compliant facility from Gemcorp Capital on July 13, 2026, then a $75 million Shariah-compliant facility from Fasanara Capital nine days later, on July 22 — $95 million in fresh debt landed inside its embedded-finance arm Fina in under two weeks, according to Alternative Credit Investor and a Latham & Watkins release on the Fasanara deal. Both facilities fund invoice and trade financing for Saudi SMEs, collateralized by the SAR 10 billion in B2B commerce SILQ says it ran through 2026.

Why a Mezzanine Layer

Gemcorp Principal Petar Ivanovic called the deal three firsts for the firm in the Kingdom: "our first direct lending transaction in Saudi Arabia, our first Shariah-compliant financing structure, and our first mezzanine facility in the Kingdom." Mezzanine debt sits below senior lenders in repayment priority and costs more to compensate for that risk. Stacking it alongside Fasanara's larger, presumably senior-sized facility lets SILQ add capacity without renegotiating its primary lending relationship — a structure that only works if the underlying loan book is already throwing off predictable repayment data.

The Traction Behind the Terms

The number lenders are underwriting is scale, not promise: SILQ says its Sary procurement platform and Fina together serve more than 50,000 businesses in Saudi Arabia and enabled SAR 10 billion — roughly $2.7 billion at the riyal's dollar peg — in B2B commerce during 2026, per Wamda. That transaction volume is the collateral story: a lender financing invoices and trade credit is really underwriting the repayment behavior of those 50,000 SMEs, and SAR 10 billion in verified commerce is the track record that lets two lenders close in the same month instead of one.

Where the Group Came From

SILQ formed in April 2025 when Saudi B2B marketplace Sary merged with Bangladesh's ShopUp, backed by a $110 million round led by Sanabil Investments — the PIF-owned fund — and Peter Thiel's Valar Ventures, according to Wamda's coverage of the merger. Fifteen months later, the group isn't raising equity to prove the model works; it's raising debt to fund the SME loans that model now originates. That shift, from equity backing a merger thesis to two lenders backing a loan book, is itself the signal that Fina's underwriting has moved from pitch deck to repayment history.

The Bet

Afeef Zaman, SILQ's founder and CEO, framed the Gemcorp deal as strengthening "financial inclusion for SMEs across Saudi Arabia" — but the real bet sits with the lenders, not the founder. Gemcorp and Fasanara are wagering that SAR 10 billion in B2B commerce translates into a loan book that repays cleanly enough to justify a $95 million combined bet in nine days, without either firm disclosing tenor or pricing. If Fina's default rate holds, SILQ has built a second funding rail independent of equity markets. If it doesn't, the mezzanine tranche is the one that absorbs it first.