Artfi, a non-fungible token (NFT) focused startup, has raised $3.26 million from several investors including Sheikha Hend Al Qassemi, a member of the ruling family of Emirate of Sharjah, and Raza Beig, director of Landmark Group, UAE. The current funding was raised at a valuation of $100 million. Artfi is on a mission to democratize the fine art space by fractionizing high-value artworks into limited editions NFTs. The NFTs will be minted on the polygon network. The fine art fintech company is now gearing up for whitelisting for its first fine art NFT offering from August and is also working towards developing a museum in the metaverse where the art collection will be always accessible. Asif Kamal, Founder of Artfi stated that the company will use the investment funds to build its technology and a dedicated marketplace for fine art NFTs. A portion of the funds will also be deployed to strengthen its product and team. Kamal stated in an interview, “Artfi was launched with a vision to ma...

  UAE based ZelaaPayAE, with headquarters in Sharjah Tech Park and offices in Dubai, which works to integrate fiat and crypto payments utilizing Polygon Blockchain infrastructure, has now joined Visa’s Fintech Fast Track program for a period of five years, to speed up the process of integrating with visa while introducing crypto backed payment credential in the UAE and wider CEMEA region. As per ZelaaPayAE twitter post, “In this 5-year long partnership with Visa, we are focused on growing across United Arab Emirates and KSA region. ZelaaPayAE shall continue to identify and develop payment products such as collateralized spending and more throughout the span of this collaboration.” They add, “This accolade now enables us as a fintech provider to enable crypto-transactions using physical debit cards easier and accessible with over 70 million merchants that comprise Visa’s vast ecosystem. It will also allow us to innovate further and surf beyond just debit cards.” “I have drea...