UPST
Upstart Holdings, Inc.
Is UPST Halal?
AI-powered lending marketplace — core business facilitates interest-based consumer and auto loans.
What You Should Know
Upstart Holdings is a US fintech company operating an AI-powered lending marketplace that connects borrowers with bank and credit-union partners for personal loans, auto loans, and home-equity lines of credit. The Upstart model uses AI and machine learning to assess credit risk and refers approved borrowers to partners who fund the loans. Upstart earns referral and platform fees and can retain loan exposure on its own balance sheet. Its March 31, 2026 filing reports $1.961 billion of interest-bearing debt against $2.962 billion of assets. The core business is the origination and facilitation of interest-bearing consumer loans, which fails the qualitative screen under the standard prohibition on riba.
⚠️ Concerns
- •Core business is the origination and facilitation of interest-bearing personal, auto and home loans — riba is categorically prohibited in Islamic law
- •Upstart earns referral and platform fees from interest-bearing loan origination
- •On-balance-sheet loan and securitization exposure
- •The latest quantitative debt/assets ratio is 66.21%, above the examined limits
- •No Sharia-compliant restructuring is identified
Current quantitative Sharia screen
Based on 10-Q figures for the period ended 2026-03-31; calculated 2026-07-13.
1,960.853 / 2,961.681
472.934 / 2,961.681
472.934 / 2,961.681
56.061 / 308.214
- Financial
- Fails
- Overall
- Fails
Debt/assets is 66.21%, above the examined 33.33% limit; disclosed interest income is 18.19% of revenue and the core activity is prohibited.
- Financial
- Fails
- Overall
- Fails
Debt/assets fails the examined total-assets limit, and the core business is an interest-bearing lending marketplace.
- Financial
- Fails
- Overall
- Fails
Debt/assets is above the examined Malaysia SAC limit and the core business is prohibited lending; this is not an official SAC classification.
- Financial
- Not calculated
- Overall
- Not calculated
No licensed historical market-cap series is stored.
Business-activity disclosure
Upstart operates an AI lending marketplace that originates and facilitates interest-bearing personal, auto and home loans through bank and credit-union partners. The core business is directly tied to riba-based lending and fails the qualitative screen.
Limitation: Revenue is not split into a Sharia-compliant technology-only segment that could be screened separately from the lending marketplace.
Purification
The filing discloses $56.061 million of interest income, but purification cannot cure a core prohibited lending business; ZakatInvest does not prescribe a fixed percentage.
Inputs, assumptions and primary sources
- Amounts are USD millions from Upstart's March 31, 2026 Form 10-Q.
- Interest-bearing debt includes $1,921.665 million of borrowings and $39.188 million payable to securitization note holders.
- Cash and cash equivalents are $472.934 million; loans and line-of-credit receivables are lending assets rather than trade receivables and are not counted in the receivables ratio.
- Total revenue is $308.214 million, including fee revenue and interest/fair-value activity; disclosed interest income is $56.061 million.
- The entire revenue base is treated as a conservative upper-bound prohibited-business numerator because Upstart's core model facilitates interest-bearing consumer, auto and home loans.
This is a reproducible financial screen, not a fatwa. A failed total-assets screen can coexist with a pass under a market-cap methodology. ZakatInvest keeps the qualitative assessment separate so numerical thresholds do not erase material context.
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