Aramco-backed fintech opens bank branch in London to help Muslims invest

Published

2 years ago

January 24, 2023

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Islamic fintech startup Wahed has opened its first physical branch on Baker Street in London. The glossy retail location is designed to look like an Apple store.

Wahed

An investing platform backed by the likes of oil giant Saudi Aramco and French soccer player Paul Pogba is launching a novel proposition in the U.K.: a physical branch and bank accounts backed by gold.

New York-based Wahed, which describes itself as a “halal investing platform,” has opened a branch in the U.K. in a bid to target the country’s 3.9 million Muslims with a sharia-compliant investment management and advice service.

The glossy retail location has a similar design to an Apple store, with digital displays inside and a bright sign displaying its logo outside. It is located on Baker Street in central London, just opposite a branch of U.K. banking giant HSBC.

Khabib Nurmagomedov, the Russian former professional mixed martial artist, is a promoter of the firm and will be among those attending the branch opening Tuesday.

Wahed is also debuting a debit card that lets users deposit funds with an exchange-traded commodity that tracks the price of gold, meaning they can effectively pay for everyday goods via gold.

Investors will be able to redeem the gold in their accounts for physical bars. Junaid Wahedna, CEO and Co-founder of Wahed, said it’s a way for Muslim — as well as non-Muslim — consumers to beat currency fluctuations and the rising cost of living.

“[Muslims are] an underserved community as a whole,” Wahedna said in an interview with CNBC, referring to the market opportunity for digital Islamic finance. “It’s a minority community, there’s a lack of financial literacy.”

Banking startups such as Monzo and Revolut have flourished in the U.K. without physical bank branches, offering smartphone apps that help users manage all their finances. But Wahedna cautioned that this risks leaving behind Muslim consumers.

“In the United Kingdom, [the Muslim community is] actually one of the lowest socio-economic segments of the country,” Wahed’s boss said, with “low incomes or financial literacy.”

“They have trust issues,” he added. “And so they want to see a physical presence before they trust you with money.”

Wahed’s service aims to help clients adhere to the Islamic faith’s strict doctrines on financial services: sharia law forbids its followers from charging or earning interest on loans, or investing in firms that make most of their money from the sale of things such as alcohol and gambling.

Wahed prohibits investments in companies that make money from lending, gambling, alcohol and tobacco. An account with Wahed also doesn’t offer interest on savings, nor does it tout wild returns on risky crypto tokens. Instead, the value of users’ deposits tracks the value of gold, with the precious metal fluctuating in price depending on supply and demand.

“I think it really fits with the Muslim community and what their needs are,” Wahedna said. “Because otherwise, what happens is the Muslim community, because they’re underserved, they keep their money in cash under their mattress, or in something that’s very unsafe, and they lose their money every few years because there’s a scam in the community or someone takes advantage of them. And that poverty cycle just continues.”

CEO slams lending-focused fintechs

Junaid slammed the state of modern fintech companies, suggesting that the industry is too focused on consumer lending with the rise of Klarna and other hyped “buy now, pay later” services.

“All of their business plans are built around lending revenue, right? Even digital banks, it’s like, okay, I’ll start off being a new bank, but then eventually, I’m gonna get a banking license,” said Wahedna.

Wahed is debuting a debit card linked to a gold-backed spending account. The startup is backed by French soccer star Paul Pogba.

Wahed

He said Wahed is focused on making money by charging wealth management fees, which charge users a percentage of their overall asset holdings. The startup, which was founded in 2017, remains lossmaking, but has hit operating breakeven in Malaysia and the U.S., he added.

“I feel that fintech, like most of the finance industry, is very heavily geared towards lending,” Wahedna said. “In fact, I would say, it’s making the cost of living crisis, a debt crisis, worse with a lot of the products.”

“If you look at the buy, now pay later companies, people are struggling — that’s the worst type of innovation, you’re making it easier to get people into debt,” he added.

Wahedna stressed that the company is not only for Muslims and aims to serve followers of other Abrahamic faiths as well, including Judaism and Christianity.

Staff at its London branch will help customers open accounts, make investments and give guidance on wills and estate planning.

The firm is targeting high-net-worth individuals as well as less well-off consumers, Wahedna said.

Wahed has raised $75 million of total funding to date from investors including Saudi Aramco Entrepreneurship Capital, the venture capital arm of Saudi state-backed oil firm Saudi Aramco, as well as French footballer Paul Pogba, who is a practicing Muslim.

Islamic finance has achieved significant growth over the past decade and is expected to reach $4.9 trillion in value by 2025, according to Refinitiv’s Islamic Finance Development Indicator. A number of other fintech players are seeking to tap into the halal money space, including Zoya and Niyah.

Technology

Nvidia’s next chips are named after Vera Rubin, woman who discovered dark matter

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2 hours ago

March 13, 2025

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Nvidia’s next chips are named after Vera Rubin, woman who discovered dark matter

Jensen Huang, co-founder and CEO of Nvidia, displays the new Blackwell GPU chip during the Nvidia GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California, on March 18, 2024.

David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is expected to reveal details about Rubin, the chipmaker’s next AI graphics processor, on Tuesday at the company’s annual GTC conference.

While other tech companies usually name their products using combinations of inscrutable letters and numbers, most of Nvidia’s most recent GPU architectures have been named after famous women scientists.

Nvidia is naming its next critical AI chip platform after Vera Rubin, an American astronomer.

The company has never explained its naming convention, and hasn’t emphasized the diversity aspect of its choices, but Nvidia’s chip names that highlight women and minority scientists are one of the most visible efforts to honor diversity in the tech industry during a period where diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives are being slashed by the Trump administration.

Rubin discovered a lot of what is known about “dark matter,” a form of matter that could make up a quarter of the matter of the universe and which doesn’t emit light or radiation, and she advocated for women in science throughout her career.

Nvidia has been naming its architectures after scientists since 1998, when its first chips were based on the company’s “Fahrenheit” microarchitecture. It’s part of the company’s culture – Nvidia used to sell an employee-only t-shirt with cartoons of several famous scientists on it.

It’s one of Nvidia’s quirks that has received more attention as it’s risen to become one of the three most-valuable tech companies and one of the most important suppliers to Google, Microsoft, Amazon, OpenAI, Tesla and Meta.

Investors want to hear on Tuesday how fast the Rubin chips will be, what configurations it will come in and when it might start shipping.

Before revealing a new architecture, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang usually gives a one-sentence biography of the scientist it’s named after.

“I’d like to introduce you to a very, very big GPU named after David Blackwell, mathematician, game theorist, probability,” Huang said at last year’s GTC conference. “We thought it was a perfect name.”

Rubin is a fitting name for Nvidia’s next chip, which comes as the company tries to solidify the gains it has made in recent years as the leader in AI hardware. “Vera” will refer to Nvidia’s next-generation central processor, and “Rubin” will refer to Nvidia’s new GPU.

FILE PHOTO: World famous astronomer Vera Rubin, 82, in her office at Carnegie Institution of Washington in Washington, DC on January 14, 2010.

Linda Davidson | The Washington Post | Getty Images

Born in Philadelphia in 1928, Rubin studied deep space and worked with other scientists to develop better telescopes and instruments that could collect more detailed data about the universe. In 1968, according to a Nova documentary, she started observing the Andromeda galaxy and collecting the data that would upend science’s understanding of our universe.

Her primary claim to fame came after she observed how quickly galaxies rotate.

“The presumption was that the stars near the center of a galaxy would be orbiting very rapidly, and stars at the outside would be going very slowly,” Rubin said in 1987.

But Rubin realized that she was observing that outer stars were moving quickly, contrary to expectations. They weren’t flying out of orbit, which meant that there had to be more mass scientists weren’t observing — confirming the concept of dark matter.

She was acclaimed during her lifetime, published over 100 papers and held three advanced degrees, but she still faced discrimination because of her sex. Early in her career, Rubin wasn’t allowed to collect her own data, and some observatories didn’t allow women, according to the documentary.

Rubin died in 2016. In 2019, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a state-of-the-art telescope in Chile, was named after her. A biography on the federally-funded observatory’s website was edited to remove details about her advocacy for women in science earlier this year, according to ProPublica.

“I hope you will love your work as I love doing astronomy,” Rubin said at a commencement address in 1996. “I hope that you will fight injustice and discrimination in all its guises.”

Rubin isn’t the first woman to be honored with an Nvidia chip named after her.

Before Blackwell, who was the first Black American inducted into the National Academy of Sciences, Nvidia’s most advanced AI chip family was Hopper, named after American computer scientist Grace Hopper, who coined the term “bug” to refer to computer glitches. In 2022, Nvidia released its “Ada Lovelace” architecture, named after the British mathematician who pioneered computer algorithms in the 19th century.

The scientist names used to be a secondary naming convention, taking a back seat to the actual product name, and primarily appearing in marketing copy. Nvidia users more frequently referred to the “H100” chip or marketing names for consumer graphics cards like GeForce RTX 3090.

But last year, Huang emphasized that Blackwell wasn’t a single chip, it was a technology platform, and Nvidia increasingly started using the term “Blackwell” to refer to all of the company’s latest-generation AI products, such as its GB200 chip and DGX server racks.

Keeping momentum going

Now investors and analysts track how many “Hoppers” are in use, and big companies brag about having early access to “Blackwell.”

It’s critical for Nvidia that Rubin achieve the same last-name familiarity level as Hopper and Blackwell.

The company’s sales more than doubled in its fiscal 2025, ended January, to $124.62 billion, thanks to durable sales for the company’s Hopper chips and early demand for the company’s Blackwell chips.

In order to keep growth rising, Nvidia needs to deliver a next-generation chip that justifies its cost and improves on the previous generation’s speeds, power efficiency and cost of ownership.

The company has targeted 2026 for a rollout of the Vera chips, according to an investor presentation last fall. In addition to Vera Rubin, Nvidia is expected to discuss Blackwell Ultra, an updated version of its Blackwell chips that analysts expect the company to start selling later this year.

Huang also teased during an earnings call last month that he’ll show the “next click” after Vera Rubin. That architecture will likely be named after a scientist, too.

“These products should excite partners at the conference ranging from Microsoft to Dell to sovereigns, which normally would please investors,” Melius Research analyst Ben Reitzes wrote in a note on Monday.

Tuesday’s keynote will also be a test of Nvidia’s relatively new release cadence, where it strives to reveal new chips on an annual basis. Investors will also want to see whether Nvidia can continue to impress tech critics and developers while releasing new chip families on a faster schedule than it’s used to. Blackwell was announced last March, and its sales started showing up in Nvidia’s October quarter.

WATCH: Final Trades: Nvidia, Taiwan Semi, Amazon and the IEFA

Technology

Why the toll road text scam is out of control across the U.S., and Apple, Android can’t do anything to stop it

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4 hours ago

March 13, 2025

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Why the toll road text scam is out of control across the U.S., and Apple, Android can't do anything to stop it

The texts first started arriving on Eric Moyer’s phone in February. They warned him that if he didn’t pay his FastTrak lane tolls by February 21, he could face a fine and lose his license.

The Virginia Beach resident did what the majority of people do: ignore them. But there was enough hesitation to at least double-check.

“I knew they were a scam immediately; however, I had to verify my intuition, of course; I accessed my E-ZPass account to ensure, plus I knew that I had not utilized a toll road in recent months,” Moyer said, adding that his wife’s phone also received the same blitz of menacing messages.

But not everyone ignores them, and, unlike Moyer, not everyone has an E-ZPass account to check. Some people do pay, which makes the whole endeavor worthwhile for hackers, and which is why the toll texts keep coming. And coming.

In fact, cybersecurity firm Trend Micro has seen a 900% increase in searches for “toll road scams” in the last three months, meaning, the company says, that these scams are hitting everyone, everywhere, and hard.

“It is obviously working; they are getting victims to pay it. This one apparently seems to be going on a lot longer than we normally see these things,” said Jon Clay, vice president of threat intelligence at Trend Micro.

In this case, the “they” are likely Chinese criminal gangs working from wherever they can find a foothold, including Southeast Asia, which Clay says Chinese criminal gangs are turning into a hot spot.

“They are basically building big data centers in the jungle,” Clay said, and staffing them with scammers.

Clay also says that absent a big news event that scammers can latch onto, the toll scam fills the void. But he said tax-time scams will soon really ramp up.

What really makes the toll scam effective is that it is cheap and easy for scammers to utilize. They can buy numbers in bulk and send out millions of texts. A handful of people will be persuaded to pay the $3 toll fee to avoid the (fictional) threat of fines or licensing revocation. But Clay says they aren’t just interested in the $3; it’s your personal information that you’ll enter that has far more value.

“Once they have that, they can scam you for other things,” Clay said.

Aidan Holland, senior security researcher at threat research platform Censys, has been extensively tracking toll scams and agrees that they are likely perpetuated by Chinese criminals overseas. Holland has identified 60,000 domains, which he estimates cost the criminals $90,000 to buy in bulk and use to launch attacks.

“You don’t invest that much unless you are getting some kind of return,” Holland said.

State-run toll systems across the U.S. targeted

The domains use variations of state-run toll systems like Georgia’s Peach Pass, Florida’s Sun Pass, or Texas’s Texas Tag. They also have more domains from generic-sounding toll systems for people who don’t have a specific toll system in their state. He’s traced the domains to Chinese networks, which point to a Chinese origin.

Apple’s iPhones are supposed to have a safety feature that strips the link from the text, but hackers are finding ways to evade that, making it easier to fall for the ruse.

“They are constantly changing tactics,” Holland said.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

“Apple doesn’t do anything about it. … Android will add it to their spam list so you won’t get texts from the same number, but then the scammers will just change numbers,” Clay said. “Apple has done a wonderful job of telling everyone their phone is secure, and they are, but not from this kind of attack,” Clay added.

Across the 241 miles of the Ohio Turnpike, the scam first appeared on the state’s radar in April 2024, but it has been ramping up recently, said a spokesman for the Ohio public road system.

“Over the past two weeks, our customer service center has received a record number of calls from customers and mobile device users in area codes across Ohio and elsewhere about the texting scam,” the spokesman said. The good news, he says, is that the calls have been tailing off in recent days, likely because of growing awareness, and he said personally he knows of few who have fallen for the scam.

However, the issue has become acute enough that the Ohio Turnpike and Infrastructure Commission produced a public service video to raise awareness.

Ultimately, scammers are banking on human nature to make scams effective.

“Scammers want people to panic, not pause, so they use fear and urgency to rush people into clicking before they spot the scam,” said Amy Bunn, online safety advocate at McAfee. Bunn says that AI tools are making this type of scan more prevalent.

“Greater access to AI tools helps cybercriminals create a higher volume of convincing text messages that trick people into sharing sensitive personal or payment information – like they’d enter when paying a toll road fine,” Bunn said. McAfee research found that toll scams nearly quadrupled in volume from early January to the end of February this year.

Even if you know the text is fraudulent, she says it is important to avoid the urge to text them a few choice words or a simple “stop.”

Don’t engage at all.

“Even a seemingly innocent reply to the message can tip scammers off that your number is live and active,” Bunn said.

Holland worries that the ones falling for the scam are society’s most vulnerable: the elderly and less tech-savvy people, even children who may receive the messages on their phones.

Others have an easier out for spotting a fraud.

“I got my first text yesterday; I just deleted it. The funny thing about it is that I don’t drive and haven’t for over 30 years,” said Millie Lewis, 77, of Cleves, Ohio.

Technology

Adobe shares drop 13% as concerns about AI growth overshadow better-than-expected results

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4 hours ago

March 13, 2025

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Adobe shares drop 13% as concerns about AI growth overshadow better-than-expected results

Shantanu Narayen, Chairman and CEO of Adobe Systems addresses the gathering on the first day of the three-day B20 Summit in New Delhi on August 25, 2023.

Sajjad Hussain | AFP | Getty Images

Adobe shares dropped 13% following the company’s quarterly earnings report as investors fretted over lingering growth concerns and the software maker’s artificial intelligence monetization strategy.

The sell-off came despite better-than-expected results, which included adjusted earnings of $5.08 per share and $5.71 billion in revenue. That surpassed analysts’ estimates of $4.97 in earnings per share and $5.66 billion in revenue, according to LSEG.

Adobe called for $4.95 to $5.00 in adjusted earnings per share for the current quarter on $5.77 billion to $5.82 billion in revenue. Analysts polled by LSEG had expected $5.00 per share on $5.80 billion in revenue.

Worries have mounted in recent months that the company is falling behind some competitors and losing its advantage in generative AI. The company’s annualized recurring revenue from AI contributed $125 million during the period and Adobe expects that to double by the end of the fiscal year.

Bernstein’s Mark Moerdler, who recommends buying on the stock, wrote in a report that to “believe that ADBE is an AI winner and that AI is not replacing existing revenue streams, investors need to be able to observe longer-term trends.”

Keith Weiss, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, wrote that “new disclosure of GenAI contribution is a step in the right direction,” but that investors need to see a “clearer roadmap” at the company’s investor meeting at its annual conference next week. Morgan Stanley has the equivalent of a buy rating on the stock.

In an interview with CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime” on Wednesday, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said that, “Not only are we infusing AI in our existing products and delivering value, but it’s clear that the innovation that we’ve delivered is creating new revenue streams.”

Total revenue increased 10% year over year in the quarter that ended on Feb. 28, according to a statement. Net income of $1.81 billion, or $4.14 per share, was up from $620 million, or $1.36 per share, in the same quarter a year earlier. Adjusted earnings per share exclude impact from stock-based compensation and income taxes.

For the 2025 fiscal year, the company expects adjusted earnings per share of between $20.20 and $20.50, with $23.3 billion to $23.55 billion in revenue. That implies about 9% growth at the middle of the range. The LSEG consensus was for earnings of $20.40 per share, with $23.49 billion in revenue.