ECB Adds CashNow Botim Finance’s Micro-Loan Data to UAE Credit Reports

Etihad Credit Bureau (ECB) is folding micro-loan account data into UAE credit reports for the first time, starting with more than 1 million CashNow customer profiles submitted by Botim Finance since the second quarter of 2025.

The update covers both existing and new CashNow customers and includes historical account data, not just activity going forward. It follows ECB’s earlier move to add Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) data from Tabby and Tamara, reported by UAE Fintech Vibes, and extends the same principle to a different category of short-term digital credit: micro-loans. 

CashNow Botim Finance UAE: what’s changing

CashNow is a micro-loan product offering UAE residents aged 20 to 55 loans of up to AED 5,000, with repayment terms of 91 to 180 days. It runs under Botim Finance, the fintech arm of Astra Tech’s super-app Botim.

Botim Finance was previously known as Quantix Technology Projects LLC, which became the first fintech in the UAE to hold a full CBUAE Finance Company Licence in July 2024, the first such licence the central bank had issued since 2016. That licence covers personal loans, short-term credit, vehicle loans, and BNPL, RNPL and SNPL products. Quantix was later folded into the Botim brand alongside PayBy, which separately holds Stored Value Facilities and Retail Payment Services licences.

Also, read Etihad Credit Bureau Puts Tabby and Tamara BNPL Data in UAE Credit Reports

Brian Gambin, director of partnerships at ECB, said the addition reflects how UAE consumers now borrow.

“The UAE’s financial landscape continues to evolve, with consumers accessing credit through an increasingly diverse range of products and digital channels. Following our recent inclusion of Buy Now, Pay Later data, the commencement of micro-loans data submissions such as ‘CashNow’ from Botim Finance marks another important step in broadening the information captured within UAE credit reports. This provides participating financial institutions and authorised entities with a more comprehensive view of consumers’ financial commitments, supporting informed decision-making across the financial system,” Gambin said.

Dr. Tariq BinHendi, CEO of Botim and CEO and board member of Astra Tech, put a number on the scale of the data now flowing into the system.

“Our collaboration with Etihad Credit Bureau reflects a shared commitment to strengthening the UAE’s financial infrastructure and expanding responsible access to credit. Since Q2 2025, Botim Finance has submitted micro-loan account data linked to over 1 million CashNow customer profiles to the Bureau, helping to bring a significant base of UAE residents into the formal credit reporting ecosystem through a regulated digital credit channel,” BinHendi said.

How ECB’s coverage has grown

This is not ECB’s first expansion of what counts as a financial commitment. The bureau has widened its data sources in stages as digital lending products have grown around its original bank-and-finance-company base.

Why it matters

For the UAE’s credit reporting system

A credit bureau’s usefulness depends on what it can see. A CashNow micro-loan of up to AED 5,000 is a real financial obligation competing for the same monthly income as a mortgage or personal loan payment, but until now it sat outside ECB’s file entirely. Adding it closes the same kind of gap the BNPL data addition closed earlier this year, this time for a lending category built specifically for short-term cash needs rather than purchase installments.

For CashNow borrowers and lenders

For a CashNow customer who repays on time, this is a genuine upside: that repayment history can now build a formal credit profile, the same argument ECB made when it added BNPL data. For a customer who has missed payments, those missed payments are now visible to any bank pulling a credit report, not just to Botim Finance.

Lenders assessing a mortgage or personal loan application get a fuller picture of what a borrower already owes, though only for CashNow specifically. Micro-loans from other UAE providers stay off the file until ECB reaches similar arrangements with them.

What’s next

ECB has not said which other micro-lending or short-term credit providers it plans to bring into the reporting framework next, or on what timeline. The pattern so far, salary and utility data in 2022, BNPL in 2026, now micro-loans, suggests the bureau adds a category once it has grown large enough to matter to lenders’ risk assessments, rather than working from a published roadmap.

FAQs

Editor’s Take: The million-plus profiles already submitted which is more powerful. That’s a live dataset that has been feeding into ECB’s system since Q2 2025, only now made public alongside the announcement.

CashNow got there because Botim Finance built the regulatory relationship and the licence to make it possible; plenty of other UAE micro-lending activity almost certainly isn’t showing up on a credit report yet. Until ECB names the next provider, the comprehensive view both companies describe is comprehensive for CashNow borrowers specifically, not for UAE micro-lending as a whole.