OCTA Nets US$20 Million To Embed SME Credit In KSA

OCTA, an Abu Dhabi-based fintech platform rethinking how small businesses manage their finances, has landed a US$20 million credit facility from the Riyadh-headquartered Sukna Fund for Direct Financing (SFDF), in a move that’s poised to shift how short-term financing reaches SMEs in Saudi Arabia. Through the OCTA platform, eligible SMEs will soon be able to access working capital directly, which will be seamlessly embedded within their accounts receivable workflows, with the facility scheduled to go live in the third quarter of 2025. 

The most recent credit facility from SFDF—the first open-ended Shariah-compliant direct financing fund in Saudi Arabia—follows OCTA’s $2.2 million funding round last year backed by Quona Capital, Sadu Capital, 500 Global, Sukna Ventures, Plus VC, and angel investors from Careem, Google, Amazon, Fresha, Sary, and Tap Payments. 

Since launching in Saudi Arabia in early 2025, OCTA has expanded its operations steadily. The company, co-founded by Jon Santillan and Nupur Mittal in 2024, has increased its active customer base over the past six months and now serves more than 500 businesses. Its clients include Careem, Lean Technologies, Gameball, ZenHR, and MoneyHash. To date, OCTA has processed over $290 million in invoices and $50 million in payments. 

In an interview with Inc. Arabia, Santillan, co-founder and CEO, OCTA, explained that the idea behind his business was simple: what if credit met businesses exactly where they work, instead of forcing them to chase it? To achieve this, OCTA is embedding financing into the very fabric of SME operations, shifting not just access to capital, but the mindset around how businesses manage their finances and grow. 

“We didn’t want to create another loan application flow,” Santillan told us. “We wanted capital to be embedded in what the business is already doing, issue an invoice, follow up, collect. That meant rethinking the product from first principles and designing it to feel like part of the workflow.” 

At its core, OCTA integrates financial tools like invoicing, payments, collections—and now, embedded credit—into a single operational layer for businesses. Once a company issues an invoice, it can access financing against it, with repayments automated and linked to incoming payments. It’s a model designed to align capital access with real-time business activity while minimizing friction. 

Speaking about the challenges that SMEs face, Santillian told us, “The most consistent pattern we’ve seen is the timing mismatch. Businesses do the work, issue the invoice, and then wait too long to get paid. That delay creates knock-on effects: missed payroll, delayed purchasing, stalled growth. Embedded credit closes that gap without requiring SMEs to change behavior. They keep doing what they’re already doing, but now they can access capital immediately.” 

This shift is already changing how SMEs operate, from invoicing habits to cash flow management. 

“We’ve already seen the impact. SMEs are invoicing faster, escalating more consistently, and managing cash flow with more control,” Santillan said. “For many of them, just knowing that capital is available changes how they make decisions.” 

While OCTA doesn’t underwrite the credit itself—its capital partners handle that—it does offer something just as valuable: operational context. By sitting inside the receivables workflow, OCTA can surface key signals for lenders, like invoicing behavior, payment patterns, and collections cadence. 

“That context gives our financing partners a much clearer picture of how a business is actually operating day-to-day,” Santillan noted. 

But building this kind of product wasn’t just a technical challenge—it also meant overcoming deep behavioral hurdles. 

“Most SMEs associate financing with friction like paperwork, calls, delays. We had to make it feel simple, safe, and fast. Once they experienced it once, the mental model changed: it wasn’t ‘borrowing,’ it was running the business more efficiently.” 

Looking ahead, OCTA’s ambitions extend beyond the Kingdom, with Santillian noting that the UAE is already signaling demand. 

“We’re focused on depth before expansion, but we’re already seeing strong early pull from the UAE,” Santillan said. “The pain points are the same: delayed payments, fragmented workflows, limited access to fast capital.” 

For founders building in the SME fintech space, Santillan advises them to focus on solving real pain points. “Build what people want. Solve something painfully real, make it work without friction, and earn trust by delivering results.”

Pictured in the lead image are the co-founders of OCTA, Jon Santillan (L) and Nupur Mittal (R). Image courtesy OCTA.