Compliance is architectural, not cosmetic. The Sub-Payment Facility is pre-cleared by our Sharia Advisory Board before a single line of code, contract or price is shipped.
BuildFi operates as a Sharia-compatible financial institution. Every product is pre-cleared by our Sharia Advisory Board before it is coded, offered, or priced. Compliance is architectural, not cosmetic — it is a pre-condition for launch, not a label applied to a conventional product.
We extend cash through Tawarruq and we transfer payment rights through Hawala. We do not buy debt at a discount, and we do not earn interest. Every transaction has a real underlying obligation, a transparent profit, and a disclosed settlement mechanism.
This page describes our standards, our oversight structure, our sector exclusions and the documents we will publish on licence-grant. It is not an offer of financial services; product-specific terms are disclosed in-contract.
Our Board is three scholars deep, including at least one AAOIFI-certified scholar with two-decade track record in Gulf Islamic banking. Board composition and appointment records are filed with the ADGM RA and updated publicly on any change. Detailed biographies on request under NDA.
The Board convenes quarterly and is on-call for any product variation, novel structure or jurisdictional question. Meeting minutes are retained under our record-keeping policy for a minimum of seven years. Late-payment charges above actual cost are routed to a Sharia-supervised charitable purification account per AAOIFI Standard 30, not booked as revenue.
The Sub-Payment Facility is structured as two AAOIFI-aligned instruments executed at the same legal moment:
Step one — Tawarruq cash facility. BuildFi extends Sharia-compatible working-capital cash to the subcontractor through a commodity Murabaha (typically traded on Bursa Suq al-Sila' or an equivalent Sharia-compliant commodity platform). The profit is disclosed at origination and is fixed.
Step two — Hawala assignment. The subcontractor assigns the right to receive the GC's contractual payment to BuildFi. The assignment is acknowledged by the GC under a payment undertaking; funds are routed directly into the BuildFi Controlled Collection Account at maturity.
The two instruments are legally distinct and Board-pre-cleared. The structure delivers the economic outcome of receivables financing within a Sharia-compatible perimeter — without selling debt at a discount (which is contested under classical fiqh).
The product suite is aligned to:
An annual external Sharia audit is conducted by an AAOIFI-accredited firm. The audit report is shared with the Board, filed with the ADGM RA, and a management summary is published to investors and counterparties on request.
BuildFi will not finance any transaction whose underlying activity involves, or is materially adjacent to: conventional interest-bearing financial services, alcohol, gambling, pork, adult entertainment, tobacco, weapons manufacture for non-defensive use, or any business practice prohibited by the Sharia Advisory Board in writing.
All GC, developer and sub onboarding is screened against this list. Screening is re-run at each credit-committee review. A single confirmed breach terminates the relationship and recalls any outstanding facility.
Disputes involving a Sharia-compatibility question are escalated to the Sharia Advisory Board for binding guidance prior to commercial or legal remedy. Commercial disputes are governed by ADGM Courts under ADGM law, with the reserved carve-out that no remedy may contravene the Board's written rulings.
Where a fatwa has been issued and subsequently revised, BuildFi provides a reasonable transition window before imposing the revised standard on in-flight transactions — in no circumstance triggering retrospective penalty or markup.
The following are available on request, and will be listed publicly from the date of our Cat 3C authorisation:
Version 2026.04 · supersedes all prior. For interpretation questions, write to sharia@buildfi.ae.
Confidential. Indicative only. Not an offer or financial promotion. Restricted to Professional Clients (ADGM FSRA definition) or equivalent accredited investors. Capital is at risk.