Even fully screened assets can pick up small amounts of tainted income along the way — purification means giving that specific portion back, not paying extra.

Based on ZARP Stablecoin's riba, gharar and maysir screening — see how we calculate purification amounts.

Overseen by Imam Omar Siddiqi, Shariah scholar and Imam of JMIC, among others, with donations paid directly to Jamiya Masjid & Islamic Centre — UK registered charity no. 1089986. Sent wallet-to-wallet; CryptoUmmah never custodies your funds. Always verify the destination address before confirming in your wallet.

Mashbooh · Doubtful · Risky

Your exact purification amount, calculated from ZARP Stablecoin's Shariah compliance score.

Your realized profit on ZARP (USD) — profit only, not principal

Amount to return0.00 USDC

to Jamiya Masjid & Islamic Centre, a registered UK charity

Purification isn't Zakat and isn't tax-deductible — it's the return of income that wasn't rightfully yours.

Scholar-verified · UK registered charity

Key facts

Chain	Ethereum
Last reviewed	17 Jul 2026

Written by ThanvirFounder, Ex Director S&P Global Energy

Reviewed by Imam Omar SiddiqiShariah Scholar

Islamic Finance Principles Assessment

Riba — Does ZARP Stablecoin involve interest?

ZARP itself is not a lending or yield product, but its disclosed Terms of Service permit the issuer to earn interest on the fiat reserves backing the token. This is a treasury-level riba concern rather than a feature of the token's core function. Muslim investors should treat this disclosure as material and proceed with caution rather than treating ZARP as automatically clean simply because it is "just a stablecoin."

Assessment: Moderate Riba Score: 58.1/100

Our methodology examines 10 criteria to evaluate how well ZARP Stablecoin avoids interest-based mechanisms.

ZARP's treasury holds ZAR cash and cash-equivalents at Old Mutual Wealth and Standard Bank, attested periodically by Kempen Audit to confirm 1:1 backing. The Terms of Service explicitly state the issuer may earn interest on these deposits while still maintaining full backing for redemptions. No protocol-level revenue breakdown is otherwise disclosed. This means the entity issuing ZARP potentially derives income from an interest-bearing arrangement, even though token holders receive no yield themselves. This structural detail is the clearest riba-adjacent feature identifiable in the available sources.

ZARP's own protocol does not lend, borrow, or offer yield — it is purely a mint/burn payment token pegged to the Rand. Any lending or yield activity involving ZARP (e.g., through Curve, Stabull, or Keep3r integrations) occurs on third-party DeFi platforms entirely outside ZARP's own contract or governance. These integrations are not designed or controlled by the ZARP issuer, and their permissibility depends on the specific mechanics of each external platform rather than on ZARP itself. Judged by its own core business model, ZARP is a settlement instrument, not a lending business.

Gharar — How much uncertainty does ZARP Stablecoin involve?

Gharar in ZARP is relatively low for a small-cap token, largely because the founding team is named, traceable, and professionally credentialed, and the smart contract is open-source. Uncertainty rises mainly from the absence of any independent code-security audit and from ZARP's very thin trading volume and holder base. On balance, informational uncertainty here is moderate rather than severe, but investors should not overlook the audit gap.

Assessment: Moderate Gharar (Material Uncertainty) Score: 69.3/100

Our methodology examines 15 criteria including team transparency, audit quality, and governance.

ZARP was founded by Simon Dingle and Kenny Inggs, both publicly identifiable with verifiable fintech and banking-systems backgrounds, with Joshin Raghubar also cited as involved. The project operates within South Africa's FSCA/FAIS crypto-asset regulatory framework, adding a layer of institutional accountability uncommon among small stablecoins. The smart contract is open-source under an MIT licence, allowing public code review. One unrelated LinkedIn profile referencing a different "Zarp" founder in India appears to be an unconnected naming coincidence rather than a red flag on this project's own transparency.

Kempen Audit has performed recurring agreed-upon-procedures engagements since at least 2022 verifying that ZARP's reserves match circulating supply, and these attestations are publicly referenced. However, this is a financial-reserve check, not a smart-contract security audit, and no named security firm such as Halborn, Trail of Bits, or OtterSec has reviewed ZARP's code in the available sources. This absence of independent code auditing is a genuine gharar concern that should be stated plainly rather than assumed away by the existence of reserve attestations.

Maysir — Does ZARP Stablecoin involve gambling or speculation?

ZARP shows little of the classic maysir profile: it is a fiat-pegged settlement token, not a leveraged bet on price movement, and its own protocol offers no staking or speculative yield mechanism. Some third-party trading of ZARP naturally occurs on secondary markets, but that reflects general market behaviour rather than a feature built into ZARP itself. The overall design leans toward utility rather than speculation.

Assessment: Minor Maysir (Incidental) Score: 74.2/100

Our methodology examines 11 criteria to determine whether ZARP Stablecoin is a gambling instrument or a genuine economic tool.

ZARP is built to function as a Rand-referenced medium of exchange for payments, remittances, and liquidity provisioning within DeFi ecosystems. Because it is minted only against verified fiat deposits by approved partners and burned on redemption, its supply directly tracks real economic backing rather than speculative demand. This mint/burn design, combined with 1:1 attested reserves, anchors ZARP's value to an external, stable reference rather than to market sentiment, distinguishing it clearly from tokens whose entire value proposition rests on price speculation.

With roughly $2.68 million market capitalization, around 700 identifiable holders, and near-zero recent trading volume, ZARP shows little evidence of active speculative trading in secondary markets at present. Its low liquidity actually limits the kind of volatile, gambling-like price action associated with maysir concerns in other tokens. Genuine utility as a payment and remittance instrument appears to outweigh speculative use, though the thin market also means investors should be realistic about liquidity constraints rather than treat ZARP as a trading vehicle.

The Full 27-Point Screening

1. Legitimacy (4 criteria)

Criterion	Score	Analysis
Team Transparency	88/100	Founders Simon Dingle and Kenny Inggs are named, credentialed, and have a public multi-year track record building ZARP.
Fraud & Scam Risk	78/100	No fraud, hack or rug-pull indicators appear; the project publishes recurring third-party reserve attestations and operates under South African regulatory oversight.
Use Case Legitimacy	85/100	Sources describe clear real-world utility as a Rand payment, remittance and DeFi-liquidity instrument rather than pure speculation.
Ethical Practices	85/100	The token's own design is a fiat-referenced payment rail with no orientation toward a prohibited industry.

Summary: ZARP is led by named, credentialed South African founders with a multi-year public track record and no identified fraud or regulatory action.

2. Project Operations (9 criteria)

Criterion	Score	Analysis
Core Protocol Business	88/100	The base protocol is a stablecoin/payments rail, not a prohibited business sector.
Transaction Fees	50/100 (low evidence)	Sources do not describe any protocol-specific fee burn, retention or distribution mechanism beyond generic blockchain gas costs, so this could not be established.
Treasury Assets	30/100	The Terms of Service explicitly permit the issuer to earn interest on treasury deposits held with a wealth manager, indicating an interest-bearing treasury.
Revenue Model	35/100	Revenue appears to derive at least partly from interest on treasury reserves per the ToS, though no full revenue-model disclosure exists.
Transparency	82/100	The smart contract is open-source under MIT licence and the project publishes a dedicated transparency/attestation page.
Governance	30/100	Minting is restricted to approved partners and cryptographic keys are exclusively controlled by Inves Capital, indicating a centralised governance model.
Launch Fairness	80/100	Tokens are minted only against verified fiat deposits with no described pre-mine or insider allocation.
Token Distribution	58/100	Distribution occurs via partner-mediated mint/redeem with a small holder base (~700), but granular distribution data is not detailed.
Speculation/Utility Ratio	85/100	The token is described and used primarily for payments, remittance and liquidity rather than speculative trading.

Summary: ZARP is a centrally-issued, open-source, multi-chain Rand-pegged token minted only via approved partners against fiat deposits, with no described pre-mine but concentrated issuer control.

3. Financial Health (4 criteria)

Criterion	Score	Analysis
Protocol Revenue	32/100	Disclosed permission to earn interest on treasury holdings points to an interest-linked revenue component.
Financial Status	68/100	The peg is maintained via attested reserves, but overall market size and trading activity are small, limiting confidence in broader financial stability.
Interest Assessment	72/100	The ZARP smart-contract protocol itself contains no lending or borrowing logic; it is a plain mint/burn/transfer token.
Audit Quality	28/100	Only a reserve-attestation engagement (Kempen Audit) was found; no named smart-contract security audit firm or report could be identified.

Summary: The protocol offers no native lending or yield itself, its treasury is attested for 1:1 backing, but the issuer is explicitly permitted to earn interest on reserves and no smart-contract security audit could be found.

4. Token Economics (5 criteria)

Criterion	Score	Analysis
Token Purpose	85/100	ZARP functions as a genuine utility token representing Rand value for payments and liquidity, not a meme asset.
Governance Rights	N/A	No governance rights are described for ZARP holders, and a plain stablecoin lacking governance is not itself a Shariah concern.
Rewards Distribution	78/100	No fixed or guaranteed reward mechanism for holding ZARP is documented in reliable sources, avoiding an interest-like structure, though this absence is inferred rather than explicitly confirmed.
Speculation Controls	N/A	As an inherently pegged, price-stable asset, dedicated anti-speculation controls are not a meaningful requirement.
Asset Backing	80/100	ZARP is backed 1:1 by Rand cash reserves independently attested by Kempen Audit.

Summary: ZARP is a genuine fiat-referenced utility token without governance rights or a confirmed native reward mechanism, backed by attested Rand cash reserves.

5. Staking Mechanism

ZARP Stablecoin has no native staking mechanism, so these five criteria are not applicable and are excluded from the score entirely rather than counted as zeros.

Overall Assessment: ZARP presents as a transparent, utility-driven, credibly-run Rand stablecoin whose main Shariah-relevant caution is the disclosed interest-earning treasury and the absence of an independent security audit.

Is ZARP Stablecoin halal?

RibaSharia pillar · 58.1/100 · Review · 10 criteria

GhararSharia pillar · 69.3/100 · Review · 15 criteria

MaysirSharia pillar · 74.2/100 · Compliant · 11 criteria

LegitimacyDiligence dimension · 84/100 · Compliant · 4 criteria

ProjectDiligence dimension · 59.8/100 · Review · 9 criteria

FinancialDiligence dimension · 50/100 · Review · 4 criteria

TokenomicsDiligence dimension · 72.6/100 · Compliant · 5 criteria

StakingDiligence dimension · 60/100 · Review · 5 criteria

A portion of profit from ZARP isn't fully yours to keep — here's how to return it

27-point Shariah breakdown of ZARP