The Arab world, in general, and Egypt, in particular, have seen a boom in the fintech ecosystem in recent years, with a significant increase in venture capital investments directed to the field, and many fintech startups in the region were able to raise funding during the last period from the end of 2022 to the Q1 of 2023, despite the global turmoil experienced by the financial and banking sectors as a result of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. Forbes Middle East highlighted the most renowned of these promising startups from the region. They evaluated the top 30 fintech companies in the Middle East and North Africa for 2023, with Egypt topping the list with 8 companies as the following.
Here is the list of top 8 fintech companies in Egypt that are leading the rankings:
1. Fawry for Banking Technology and Electronic Payments
- Date of Establishment: 2008
- Headquarters: Egypt
- Description: E-payment platform
- Founders: Ashraf Sabry, Seif Coutry, Medhat Khalil, Magda Habib, Amjad Sabry
Fawry’s essential services include electronic bill payments and mobile top-ups. It also enables company owners and SMEs to take payments through websites, mobile phones, and POS systems. With a network of 36 banks and 280,000 agents, the firm serves 49.4 million consumers and contributed $6.8 billion in transactions in 2022. In November 2022, its subsidiary, Fawry Microfinance, launched Tamweelak Fawry to process, track, and repay loan applications, and it expects to introduce a BNPL service later this year. The company’s revenue increased by 37.5% in 2022 to $75 million, and its market capitalization reached $542 million on March 21, 2023. The UAE Sovereign Fund (ADQ) owns 12.6% of Fawry.
2. MNT-Halan
- Date of Establishment: 2018
- Headquarters: Egypt
- Description: Lending, BNPL, and payments platform
- Founders: Mounir Nakhla, Ahmed Mohsen
MNT-HALAN offers unbanked customers digital banking services such as microfinance, e-payment, consumer finance, and e-commerce. It got a license from the Central Bank of Egypt to operate a digital wallet through its subsidiary, allowing it to exchange, collect, and transfer monies via the program. The company has 1.5 million monthly active users and over 6 million total users, including 4 million financial customers and 2.5 million borrowers. By 2022, the platform’s transaction volume had risen to $1.8 billion. The company stated in February 2023 that it had received $200 million in financing from Chimaera Abu Dhabi, valued at $1 billion.
3. AMAN Holding
- Date of Establishment: 2015
- Headquarters: Egypt
- Description: E-payment and financial services providers
- Founders: Mohamed Wahby, Hazem Moghazi
AMAN offers e-payments, consumer finance, microfinance, and SME services. It serves 40 million clients in Egypt monthly through 163 offices, 230 retail outlets, and more than 170,000 POS. AMAN Holding lends to over a million people through Microfinance and Consumer Financing. AMAN’s app offers various services, including shopping and bill and utility payments. As of December 2022, it has been downloaded over a million times and had 550,000 active users. In 2022, the company processed $1.5 billion in transactions, up from $1.3 billion in 2021. AMAN’s securitization arm received regulatory permission for a three-year $161.8 million securitization program in February 2023. In 2022, the company launched a money market fund to support unbanked customers.
4. Paymob
- Date of Establishment: 2015
- Headquarters: Egypt
- Description: Financial technology company
- Founders: Islam Shawky, Alain El Hajj, Mostafa Menessy
Through its portal, POS machines, and Paymob app, Paymob enables businesses in Egypt, Pakistan, the UAE, and Oman to take in-store and online payments using more than 40 payment methods. Its corporate users have surpassed 170,000, with 18 million customers enabled for the phone wallet via its infrastructure. Vodafone, LG, Virgin, Chalhoub Group, Tabby, Uber, Foodics, and Decathlon are among the users. In 2022, the firm launched the Paymob app in Egypt and raised $50 million in a Series B funding round led by Kora Capital and PayPal Ventures in May 2022, increasing its total to $68.5 million.
5. valU
- Date of Establishment: 2017
- Headquarters: Egypt
- Description: Buy-Now, Pay-Later platform
- CEO: Walid Hassouna
valU, a subsidiary of EFG Hermes Holding, is a BNPL app allowing users to shop at over 4,000 retailers and 1,000 websites in Egypt, with 30 to 60 months of payment options. By the end of December 2022, EFG Hermes Holding’s platform had grown 2.5-fold, with over one million transactions totaling $300 million and 935,000 users. valU purchased Paynas, an online personnel management services platform that offers various financial services to SMEs, in August 2022. The Alhokair family paid $12.4 million for a 4.99% share in the app in June 2022.
6. MoneyFellows
- Date of Establishment: 2017
- Headquarters: Egypt
- Description: Digitized ROSCA system
- Founder: Ahmed Wadi
MoneyFellows is a company that digitizes money circles or rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCA), often known as “Gameya” in Arab nations. MoneyFellows’ total value of money circles digitized tripled in 2022 compared to 2021. As of December 2022, the MoneyFellows app had been downloaded 4.2 million times, with 332,000 active users. The company raised $31 million in a Series B fundraising round in October 2022, increasing its total capital to $38 million.
7. PaySky
- Date of Establishment: 2017
- Headquarters: Egypt
- Description: Digital payment solutions company
- Founder: Waleed Sadek
PaySky provides digital payment solutions to financial institutions, businesses, and individuals in 11 countries. It aided in developing national payment gateways for several MEA central banks. PaySky teamed with Visa in 2022 to launch the Yalla Card and Yalla Super app, which offers more than 30 micro apps, including financial and non-financial services, to consumers and businesses in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, with plans to debut in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in 2023. The Yalla Super app had been downloaded over 2.5 million times as of December 2022, with over 1.6 million active users. As part of its expansion goal, Yalla Super App introduced its Yalla Invest mini-app for investing in gold starting at 0.25 grams in February 2023.
8. Thndr
- Date of Establishment: 2020
- Headquarters: Egypt
- Description: Digital investment platform
- Founders: Ahmad Hammouda, Seif Amr
Thndr, a digital investment platform launched in late 2020, allows users to participate in Egyptian mutual funds, publicly traded corporations, and the US stock market. As of December 2022, its app had 1.1 million downloads and over 271,000 active users. Thndr says their platform accounts for 86% of new registrations in local Egyptian exchanges. Cofounder and CEO Ahmad Hammouda is a former Uber Egypt general manager, and Cofounder and COO Seif Amr is a former Uber MENA operations manager.
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