National Bank of Fujairah (NBF) has with Numou, a digital financing marketplace owned by Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), on 18 August 2026, to connect UAE small and medium-sized enterprises with a broader range of financing options.
What the partnership actually covers
The collaboration spans account opening, guarantees, working capital, invoice financing and trade finance, combining NBF’s relationship-driven commercial banking with Numou’s digital marketplace infrastructure. Numou operates as a UAE-based digital financing marketplace built to improve SME access to capital, positioned as a distribution channel connecting SMEs to financing products rather than a lender in its own right.
“At NBF, enabling SMEs and entrepreneurs is central to our role as a trusted banking partner,” said Adnan Anwar, chief executive of National Bank of Fujairah.
Mohamed Al Binali, general manager of Numou, said the partnership “reflects our shared commitment to supporting SMEs and improving access to financing across the UAE.”
Why an established bank needs a digital marketplace partner
operating in the UAE, a figure both parties cited directly. For a traditional commercial bank like NBF, reaching that segment efficiently is a distribution problem as much as a credit one: SME lending typically carries higher per-account servicing costs and more fragmented documentation requirements than corporate lending, which is precisely the gap a digital marketplace layer is built to narrow.
Numou’s ADGM ownership gives the marketplace a regulated home base while functioning as connective infrastructure between banks and businesses, rather than requiring NBF to build that matching and onboarding capability internally.
Numou has added two more partners since
Two days after the NBF MoU, Ajman Bank signed its own MoU with Numou, dated 20 August, to explore Shari’ah-compliant SME financing. The areas under discussion are procurement financing, invoice financing, working capital facilities, business account opening, API connectivity and embedded financing journeys.
On 8 October, Numou signed a partnership with Comera Financial Holding (CFH), part of Abu Dhabi’s Royal Group, at ADGM. CFH will offer working capital, supply chain finance, business accounts and digital payments through the marketplace, under its three brands: Comera Finance for business lending, Comera Pay for payments and merchant solutions, and Comera Money for supply chain finance.
Mohamed Al Binali, Numou’s general manager, said,
“SMEs need financial solutions that support the way they do business”.
Akhtar Saeed Hashmi, CFH’s chief executive, said:
“SME growth depends on access to capital and the ability to put it to work.”
Why it matters
This is one of several SME-financing partnerships NBF has entered this year, alongside on SME banking distribution and Umm Al Quwain Free Trade Zone Authority. Taken together, the pattern suggests NBF is deliberately assembling distribution partnerships across different SME segments and channels rather than building a single in-house digital SME platform, a strategy that trades direct control for faster reach across a fragmented customer base.
For Numou, the NBF, Ajman Bank and CFH agreements in under two months show a marketplace adding both banks and a non-bank financing group, testing whether an ADGM-backed financing marketplace can scale by plugging into other lenders’ balance sheets rather than becoming a lender itself.
What’s next
Neither NBF nor Numou has disclosed specific product launch dates, or which of the five financing categories, account opening, guarantees, working capital, invoice financing or trade finance, will roll out first. The same is true of the Ajman Bank and CFH agreements. What to watch is when any of the three partners’ products go live on the marketplace, and how many SMEs use them.
