Our vision was simple: create a means of managing a zakat portfolio in the palm of your hand while tackling some of the ease and efficiency issues that Muslim charitable donations have faced in the past - accountability, transparency, ease of donations, and creating a two-way relationship between donors and charities.

Zakatify was designed to replicate the process of online investing - providing a secure platform, predictable and planned giving (we split annual goals into monthly donations), and an easily customized experience.

While we didn't achieve the scale and support we had hoped for, we feel we pushed the needle forward on zakat and hope that the idea takes hold eventually for the benefit of all.

With the help of the PayPal Giving Fund, we were able to accelerate our proof of concept that helped vet charities, provide a direct pipeline of funding from the donor to the charities, provide charities with a detailed record of donations and a means of connecting with donors, and ensure secure transactions.

We enabled personal portfolios and annual zakat goals which automatically recalculated when new charities were added or donor financial criteria changed, and gave both donors and charities regular monthly and annual reports. We even created curated portfolios based on an issue (food insecurity, human rights, etc.) that made it easy to support a cause broadly. Over 10,000 donors used Zakatify to make donations during our first year in operations, and we learned valuable lessons that challenged our assumptions.

Tech entrepreneur plans to bring zakat into the modern age with a donation app, The National, May 14, 2020

The biggest challenge that Zakatify had was to change longstanding donation habits that have been entrenched in Muslim communities for generations.

Most of our users have been accustomed to one-time annual donations during Ramadan to local and/or personally known charities. Our assumption that people would be willing to distribute micro-donations to a portfolio akin to a stock portfolio was not backed up by user actions. Also, we were not able to create a more seamless transaction experience that would allow payments directly from bank accounts or Google/Apple Pay, something that our users often requested.

As of 2024, we've deleted all personal information and accounts and wound down all operations. We want to thank our development teams in Abuja, Nigeria and Gaza, Palestine for their technical prowess and professionalism through the years.

Thank you again for trusting us! - Shahed and Ahmad, founders