ZIG Finance launches Zamanat credit fund in Dubai financial centre with tokens on ZIGChain
Key Facts
ZIG Finance announced the launch of Zamanat Fund CEIC Limited on 10 September 2026, a closed-ended, exempt credit fund domiciled in the Dubai International Financial Centre and regulated by the Dubai Financial Services Authority. The fund issues its investment units as ZM1 tokens on the ZIGChain network. Investment is limited to professional clients who meet the authority’s criteria, according to the company. This places the fund within a regulated framework with restricted eligibility, rather than an offering open to the public. The announcement’s details do not establish that the fund is intended to finance small and medium-sized enterprises in Saudi Arabia or that it will launch on BNB Chain.
ZIG Finance said Truleum Venture Partners Limited manages the fund, while Apex Group handles its administration. The announcement thus identifies the fund’s investment-management and operational-administration roles. The description of it as a Saudi fund is not supported by the published launch information, which identifies its domicile as the Dubai International Financial Centre. Issuing tokens on ZIGChain also differs from the reference to BNB Chain in the widely circulated headline. These details establish the product’s identity and structure, without providing evidence of a geographic focus on Saudi credit.
Zamanat’s launch follows ZIGChain’s announcement on 5 August 2026 of a strategic investment from Laser Digital and a partnership with ZIG Markets to support the development of on-chain financial products. ZIGChain said Laser Digital’s role includes supporting product structuring and the design of risk and governance frameworks across a range of ZIG Markets vaults. This provides context for the companies’ relationship in developing tokenized credit products, but does not establish that Laser Digital advised specifically on the Zamanat fund. ZIGChain also did not disclose the amount of Laser Digital’s investment or the price of the associated token. The partnership announcement therefore does not confirm a specific investment value or financing details for the fund announced later.
ZIGChain said the areas it aims to develop include private credit, small and medium-sized enterprise financing, invoice financing and financial products linked to stablecoins. The company targeted total value locked of at least $100 million across a planned group of institutional vault products. That figure is a stated target for the group, not the financing volume of Zamanat alone or an amount already raised. The stated target therefore covers a broader scope than a single fund, while Zamanat’s announcement does not specify its asset value or subscription volume. The chief executive of Laser Digital said that “execution risk has consistently been underestimated,” referring to the challenges involved in developing on-chain finance.
Financing for small and medium-sized enterprises in Saudi Arabia features in a broader context of a funding gap, but available official figures concern the market as a whole and do not link it to Zamanat. Saudi Vision 2030’s report showed that loans to these businesses accounted for 9.4% of total bank lending in the third quarter of 2024, against a 2024 target of 10% and a 2030 target of 20%. The International Monetary Fund said lending rose from 5.8% in 2018 to 9.4% in 2024, noting that additional measures would be needed to meet the 2030 target. The Saudi Small and Medium Enterprises Bank reports data on more than 1.8 million businesses, more than 489 billion riyals in credit facilities, and a financing share of 11.8% of the total. These indicators do not provide evidence that Zamanat will finance businesses in Saudi Arabia or contribute to those targets.
In its August announcement, ZIGChain said the first product from its partnership with Laser Digital was expected to launch in the following months, with further details to be published as completion approached. This timeline sets a broad expectation for a product from the partnership, but does not identify Zamanat as that product or link it to a launch date. ZIG Finance, meanwhile, announced Zamanat’s launch in September and specified its regulatory domicile, token-issuance network and investor eligibility. ZIG Finance’s public news page did not show an announcement of a Saudi fund on BNB Chain; its latest visible announcement was a partnership with Fasanara Capital dated 14 October 2026. Any link between Zamanat and financing for Saudi businesses, or between the fund itself and the $100 million target, therefore remains unsubstantiated by the announcements cited.