Comfi.ai Launches in Dubai: Invoice Financing with AI Credit Scoring for UAE and MENA SMBs
Today, Comfi.ai opens its platform to UAE businesses. We have been working toward this for over a year, and we want to explain what we have built and why we built it the way we did, because the decisions behind the product reflect what we learned from talking to hundreds of SMB owners in Dubai and across the GCC.
The short version: we built an invoice financing product with AI credit scoring specifically for the working capital problem that is most common for UAE SMBs, the gap between completing work, issuing an invoice, and waiting 60 to 90 days for the buyer to pay.
Why We Started with the UAE Market
My co-founder Nadia Petrov and I came to Dubai from different backgrounds. I had spent years working with growing businesses across Central Asia and the GCC. Nadia had built credit modeling infrastructure at a European fintech before she joined me here. When we sat down to figure out where to focus, the UAE SMB financing gap was the clearest opportunity we saw.
The UAE has a large and growing B2B economy. It has a high concentration of trading businesses, service companies, and professional firms that sell to corporate and government buyers. Those buyers are creditworthy and generally pay, but they pay slowly, and they pay on their schedule, not the supplier's. The supplier is typically an SMB without a banking relationship strong enough to access a working capital facility, or too young to have the two-year track record UAE banks require.
That gap between what the SMB needs and what the banking system can provide for it at its current stage is wide, persistent, and expensive. It slows business growth, strains supplier relationships, and forces founders to inject personal capital into operational gaps that should not require it.
What the AI Cash Flow Score Actually Does
The phrase "AI credit scoring" is used loosely in fintech. I want to be specific about what we mean by it and what it does for our customers.
Traditional credit scoring for SMBs is backward-looking. It analyzes historical financial statements, bureau data, and prior credit behavior. This is appropriate for products where the lender needs to assess whether a business can repay a debt over a multi-year horizon. It is a poor fit for invoice financing, where the core question is: will this specific invoice from this specific buyer collect on time, and does this business's current cash flow support an advance against it?
Our cash flow score reads current signals. When you connect your accounting software (QuickBooks, Xero, Zoho Books, or Tally) to your Comfi.ai account, we read your recent transaction patterns, invoice velocity, buyer payment behavior across your accounts receivable history, and the composition of your current receivables book. The score updates each time you submit an invoice for financing.
The result is a credit view that reflects where your business is today, not where it was 18 months ago when you last filed accounts. For growing businesses, this is the difference between a system that can see their current strength and one that can only see their earlier, smaller state.
How the Product Is Structured
Comfi.ai offers invoice financing: you submit an invoice from a B2B buyer, our system scores it, and if the offer is accepted, we advance 80 to 90 percent of the invoice value to your business account. When your buyer pays the full invoice, the advance is repaid along with a flat financing fee. The remaining balance, after advance repayment and fee, is transferred to you.
The financing fee is charged as a percentage of the invoice value per invoice, not as an annualized interest rate. This makes the cost transparent: when you see the offer, you see the exact fee for that transaction before you accept. There is no monthly platform fee, no minimum transaction volume, and no commitment to finance a minimum number of invoices. You use the product when it makes sense for your business and do not pay for it when it does not.
Our current tiers reflect different advance rates and pricing based on account history and invoice volume. Starter accounts begin at an 80 percent advance rate. As your account builds a track record with us, the advance rate can increase to 90 percent. Enterprise accounts with high monthly volumes are priced separately.
What We Are Not Doing and Why
There are a few things we have deliberately excluded from the initial product that are common in fintech platforms, and I want to explain why.
We are not building a credit card or general-purpose credit product. We are not building a payroll financing product. We are not building a multi-currency trading platform. Each of these is a different product requiring different risk infrastructure, different regulatory positioning, and different operational capabilities. We are building one product well before considering adjacent ones.
We are also not trying to serve every type of business. Our product works for B2B businesses with genuine trade invoices from identifiable buyers who pay over time. It does not work for businesses with no accounts receivable (cash businesses, B2C), businesses with very short operating histories where there is no transaction pattern to read, or businesses whose invoices are not from third-party arm's-length buyers. Being specific about who we serve is more useful than promising access to everyone.
Our Team and Where We Are Based
Comfi AI Ltd is incorporated in the DIFC. Our team includes myself as CEO and Co-Founder; Nadia Petrov, our CTO, who built the cash flow scoring system; and Omar Al-Rashid, our Head of Risk, who has spent years in credit risk in UAE financial services and designed our underwriting criteria.
We are a small team. We know our early customers by name. When something goes wrong with an application, a human reviews it. When a business has a question about why an offer was structured the way it was, someone answers it directly. That will not scale indefinitely, but it is how we intend to operate at this stage because it is the only way to learn what the product needs to become.
Getting Started
If your business has been operating for at least 12 months, uses B2B invoicing, and has buyers who pay on 45 to 90-day terms, the product is likely relevant for you. The application is online, the onboarding takes under 30 minutes, and the first financing offer can arrive on the same business day for invoices with established buyers.
We have published articles on this blog that explain the mechanics in more detail: how the scoring process works, how to think about cost, how invoice financing compares to bank loans, and how to integrate it into a cash flow planning approach. If you have questions that are not answered there, reach us through the contact page. We will respond directly.