Sedania As Salam Capital Sdn Bhd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sedania Innovator Berhad, has announced the launch Assidq.com, an Islamic online marketplace.

The online marketplace facilitates the customer’s Islamic financial needs through a personalised profile check with approval and disbursements. According to their media statement, the new portal offers a range of Islamic personal financing products and Islamic credit cards.

However, at the time of publishing, the service to apply for credit card doesn’t seem to be available. According to them, they have made partnerships with Alliance Bank & Alliance Islamic Bank, Standard Chartered & Standard Chartered Saadiq and MBSB.

Commenting on the launch, Nisa Ismail, CEO of Sedania As Salam Capital Sdn Bhd said,

“We have a unique offering in Malaysia. There is a growing demand for Islamic financial products in the strictest sense of the term. The financing has to be completely free from unethical elements including riba (usury), gharar (deceit), maysir (gambling) and zulm (immoral practices). What the country needs is a dedicated financial technology platform that could offer Islamic financial products to meet the demands of the population.

While there’s a need for more Islamic fintech innovations in Malaysia, we are currently unclear if there is a demand for yet another comparison site albeit one with an Islamic focus.

Just last year alone we’ve observed many players like Bbaazar, GoBear, CoverGo, Qompanion, and GetCover closing their existing operations or scaling back in Malaysia. Even heavily funded players like Bbazaar who are backed by the likes of Sequioa Capital and Amazon weren’t able to make much a dent in the market despite their earlier optimism.

This combined with the fact existing players like RinggitPlus, iMoney and Loanstreet all offer Islamic financial products in their platform makes it unclear to us what is Assidq.com’s value proposition beyond taking a specific positioning.