Madiha Sattar

Cairo-Based Fintech Sahl Raises $6 Million to Transform Utility Bill Payments Cairo-based fintech startup Sahl, which specializes in helping households pay their utility bills, has successfully raised $6 million in a combined seed and Series A funding round. This substantial investment will enable Sahl to refine its current offerings and develop new services as it aims to evolve into a comprehensive financial services provider. Read more👇🏼 #fintech #cairobasedfintech #Sahl Basel Daw Mahmoud El-Nokrashy Malak El Enbaby Ahmed Othman "Kika" Abdullah Assal Rawan Tawfik Yousra Mekhimar

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The Middle East needs a fresh approach to payments in order to fully embrace international businesses. At Fuse Finance, we hear two common complaints from our clients: 1️⃣ Global payment companies that offer regional payments are not local enough. They… * Don’t understand the nuances of the local markets - the Middle East is extremely relationship driven. * Often don’t have local licenses and as such can’t offer a service that is flexible and use case driven. * In many cases, can’t offer local settlement. 2️⃣ Local payment companies can’t work with global businesses. They… * Have large local markets to focus on. * Don’t have the expertise to work with global partners. * Often don’t have the regulatory coverage to operate global products where they’ve been operating on No Objection Certificates from the Central Banks, instead of holding a regulatory license. * Don’t have the ability to operate foreign exchange products at competitive rates. We take a completely different approach, we are a local partner operating at a global scale. Sitting directly in-between both models, we can: 👉🏻 Offer locally operational products sitting on top of our regulatory licenses in each market. 👉🏻 Support 10+ global currencies to fund accounts with, so that global companies can start payments in their own market and not have to worry about remitting payments using SWIFT. 👉🏻 Provide fully automated, API driven products, that you are used to seeing in more established markets from big brand payment companies. 👉🏻 Be true experts on moving money around the Middle East - as it is our entire focus. We believe you can build a BIG business as the gateway to the Middle East. Going global by adding more markets, outside of the Middle East, dilutes focus and expertise and creates all the problems that every cross border payment business has as they expand. To those businesses the Middle East may be a small non-obvious market, but by building depth in each country and making our product completely globally accessible by facilitating money movement from any currency in and out of the region, we can entirely solve these pain points. I’m biased, but the world is expanding to the Middle East right now and we believe there’s never been a bigger need for a solution like this. #middleeast #payments #crossborder #internationalexpansion

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What have banks learnt from the fintech revolution? In this piece, I looked at how the fintech revolution failed at spelling the end of traditional banking—but forever changed it. Thank you to all the experts who spoke to me and the Dubai FinTech Summit for the invitation!

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Cairo based bokra raised a $4.6 million pre-seed #Bokra, a #fintech startup, has just closed an impressive $4.6 million pre-seed round, led by DisrupTech Ventures and SS Capital, LLC, among other investors. Bokra is on a mission to revolutionize wealth management in the MENA region, aiming to democratize access to high-yield investment opportunities. Founded by industry veteran Ayman Elsawy, with 21 years of experience in non-banking financial services, Bokra is set to empower retail and SME investors by offering goal-based investment and saving products through asset-backed securities. Recognizing the challenges faced by individuals and SMEs in managing their wealth, Bokra's app offers personalized financial and investment planning across various asset classes. By leveraging fractional ownership of diverse products, users can seamlessly save and invest, overcoming barriers such as fragmented applications, non-transparent fee structures, and high ticket physical assets. Commenting on the successful pre-seed round closure, Ayman El-Sawy, Founder and CEO of Bokra, expressed his vision for the company, highlighting the potential for radical impact on financial inclusion and investment awareness across MENA. Investors Mohamed El Sayed Okasha from DisrupTech Ventures and Samer Sallam from SS Capital expressed their excitement for Bokra's innovative approach and transformative potential in the region. With a significant portion of the population remaining unbanked, the demand for alternative investment solutions is on the rise, making Bokra's mission even more relevant and timely. Set to launch in Q2 2024, Bokra's user journey promises to be personal and simple. Through a comprehensive questionnaire, users can determine their risk appetite, investment tenor, and monthly contribution amount, matched with a portfolio tailored to their goals. The funds raised will be utilized to launch the Bokra app, expand investment product offerings, and scale operations across #MENA, furthering the company's mission of promoting financial awareness and smart investing culture. The article on Finextra in the first comment. Want to stay up to date with the market? Here my newsletter: - Linkedin: https://t.ly/s541W   - Substack: https://lnkd.in/dzfGJzmW

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A hot topic over the last few years #embeddedfinace is building momentum globally. Mingzulu are actively working with a number of organisations making waves in this exciting space and we've been watching the market closely during 2022-24. To support the community we recently teamed up with our Pioneers & research partner findexable to dig deeper into whats "really" happening on the ground across the Middle East & North Africa region. Headlines From Our Analysis: 🤙 Talk of the town: Embedded finance is big, critical for scaling digital ecosystems, and growing fast. The regional market for embedded finance is already valued at $10 billion. What's more it's expected to grow by 45% to 2030 (at rate that's more than 2x faster than the rest of the world). 💡 Look further for inspiration! The easy wins of fintech's first wave across MENA are behind us. That's not to say there aren't big opportunities out there, just that the next generation of MENA scale players will forensically understand how finance and data solve real world problems. For inspiration look to Africa's booming cohort of digitally-native firms where finance is simply a feature, not the sole function. 🔢 Embedded finance ain't binary (but it does have a formula): In the early stages successful scaling players understand intuitively how to combine real-world physical relationships (to forge partnerships, build traction) with excellence in tech execution + robust, reliable data governance. In growth markets where data is patchy and has to be assembled 'in-house' the challenge is even greater - as are the rewards for the firms that 'get it'. Building the right team that understands this is essential. Great to collaborate with Simon Hardie & the findexable team on this exercise - do reach out if you'd like to discuss more & engage on the topic. #Openfinance #Fintech #BaaS #Middleeast Fintech Tuesdays Arjun Vir Singh Chafic Idriss Mehdi El Amine Fichtali Mirna Sleiman Milon Veasey Michael Ryberg Hartmann Ben Lloyd Alvaro Rojo Sunil Varhadkar Elie Nasr More info. & report download is available via the blog: https://lnkd.in/dH9vjXps

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Crypto - Next disruption in payments in MENA? In MENA, in the last decade itself, we have seen: 1) #COD / Cash on delivery: This gained prominence during the early days of ecommerce in #MENA. Consumers were not used to shopping online then and they wanted to "see the product" before paying for it. COD turned out to be a critical tool for consumers to adopt #ecommerce in the region. At one stage, COD contributed to more than 90% of online retail sales. However now its share has gone down to below 20% as online shopping has become a habit 2) Digital #payments: Decline in CoD was primary driven by the increase in digital payment options. Credit/ debit cards, digital wallets, direct bank debits were critical to adoption during the next phase and they still continue to dominate the MENA payments landscape 3) #BNPL/ Buy Not Pay Later: This form of payment started to take-off during covid period when consumer confidence was low and they wanted to delay their payments. In the last two years, adoption has double to 20% for BNPL 4) #Crypto payments: This is the new mode that is emerging. With BTC/ ETH etfs launching, there is less stigma attached is crypto now. Also stablecoins (such as USDT by Tether and USDC by Circle) have taken away the volatility that other crypto currencies see. We are starting to see low single digit adoption of crypto currencies as a payment mode in our region now There is never a dull moment in payments landscape! https://lnkd.in/dxU49qxT

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🌟 Fintech in Africa 🌟 Over the next 10 years, #fintech will grow exponentially within the African continent driven by multiple factors. The journey will be hard (at times) but exciting (all the time). I am also confident that the Middle East will have an important role to play (we can already see the evidence of the same). The mistake we all make about Africa is that we still don’t fully appreciate the diversity, scale and size of the continent. It’s home to over 1.4bn people and over 50 different countries. Number of challenges exist but none which can’t be overcome. Personally, I have been impressed with what we have seen emerge out of the continent and there is a lot more of the same which will come our way in the future. With that in mind, I look forward to participating at GITEX AFRICA where the #futureoffinance on the continent is a key topic of discussion. Thank you to the DWTC team for the invite. If you are planning to be in #Marrakesh between the 29th and 31st of May then drop me a DM and it will be pleasure to catch up when I am not running between roundtables, panels and 🔥side chats. Arthur D. Little #fintech #payments #digitalassets #banking #regulation #baas #superapps #embeddedfinance

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Last week's Dubai FinTech Summit was brilliant... So many fascinating startups, bank incubated projects, cross-company collaborations, great panel discussions, and 1000s of fintech folks from across the globe converging in one great location. I had a lot of interesting chats and saw some great talks during the two days but the one I was most surprised and delighted by was the fireside with Revolut founder Nik Storonsky. The interview had a lot of insights but it was fascinating to hear how someone at the top of the tree thinks and talks about product. Here are some of the interesting Product takeaways... 💡 On Revolut's problem solving origins starting with solving a problem the founder faced "It was my personal problem. I often travelled abroad. I was also an expat and because back then I was a trader so I was very good at maths, so every time I spent with a card I always calculated in my head how much commission I wasted with the banks and that's how the business started, first as a simple pre-paid FX card" 💡On Revolut's long term objectives and traditional challenges of building a 'global bank' (which resonate with me, as I worked for Citi EMEA and worked on their breadth of systems) "We want to build a truly global bank" "The way American banks did it before (Citi, JPM) they simply bought banks...and then tried to merge systems together. But it's a very difficult way to expand because different systems don't really talk to each other" "It becomes messy, it becomes a spaghetti and you cannot really control it" "We have a different approach. We build unified software, unified products and then we make all this software and products modularised...So we're just building products as Lego cubicles." 💡 On Nik's approach to product: "The key for any product person or any CEO who really focusses on product is to review screens yourself right, so I have product reviews, I spend like 2 days a week going team by team and reviewing designs." "I test the product myself. I ensure I have the best product people, the best designers as well. I have a very high talent bar for people I hire" "Overall, its an approach for excellency in product" 💡 On Revolut's launch in the UAE and prioritising countries for expansion "Maybe at the end of 2025. We're applying for licences and they usually take 1-1.5 years to receive" "We have quite a large waiting list here. I think it's about 100,000 people on the waiting and it's growing very fast. That's actually how we do expansion, so we look at speed of growth of the waiting list which is an indication of demand." Lot's of gems directly from the top and Revolut has also inspired the next two editions of my newsletter so keep your eyes peeled for those. In the meantime, tag a product person and/or Revolut fan below Abderrahmen Rouine Sanjiv Singh Monica Millares 🎙️Aimee Peters, FCIM David Butcher

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Over the past five years, EVM regions have seen a staggering $13.1 billion in M&A activity! 🚀 Leading the charge, the MENA region contributed 62%, driven by deals like Uber's acquisition of Careem. South East Asia followed with 30%, and Africa, with 8%, is emerging strongly. In MENA, over 31% of M&A transactions (2019-2023) were in E-commerce and Fintech, highlighting the region's digital and financial innovation. Check out our MENA industry deep dive below! 📊👇 #MergersAndAcquisitions #MENA #SEA #Africa #Ecommerce #Fintech 

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The Middle East is on the brink of a digital banking transformation. It’s visible everywhere from the billions being invested in cloud infrastructure to become the next AI superpower, to the luminaries who flocked to this week’s Dubai FinTech Summit. Our colleagues from Lab49 attended the event and noted that in addition to a heavy emphasis on AI, there was a lot of focus on how the financial arena is being disrupted. A confluence of events is driving change. There is the diversification of economies beyond oil, the emergence of a growing number of funds and startups, as well as the appearance of foreign competition including neo banks such as Revolut and Alipay. Lab49 established a presence in the UAE a few years ago anticipating the need for large banks to reimagine their customer touchpoints, and in turn their underlying data and services infrastructure. The fintech summit attracted more than 8,000 people from 118 countries, including Charith Mendis, Head of Worldwide Banking Industry at AWS; Michael Demissie, Head of Applied AI and Practice at Bank of New York; Kfir Godrich, Chief Innovation Officer at Blackrock and Alfonso Castillo, President & CEO of Santander’s U.S. Private Bank. One notable speaker was Nik Storonsky, Founder & CEO of Revolut, a bank created in 2015 that has taken Europe by storm. It has attracted 35 million customers in 38 countries by offering digital-native and mobile-first banking services. Storansky said that Revolut is in the process of applying for a banking license in the region and expects to be operational in 2025. The expansion of digital services in the Middle East has led to an unprecedented increase in the number of people with access to financial services. It was that kind of promise that prompted Mashreq Neo to open the first digital bank in the region in 2017. Mashreq Neo offers a mobile-first banking experience, including transactional accounts, savings accounts, person-to-person payments, insurance, and investment products. For the established banks, a lot of the challenge comes down to offering new products and services, and distributing them in new ways for a changing business demographic while rapidly overcoming their legacy constraints.  Young tech-savvy entrepreneurs expect digital native experiences. Even mature businesses want easier and more efficient ways to manage tax payments, treasury operations, cross border payments, and employee compensation. They want the ability to make wire payments without paying exorbitant fees. Neo banks have grown fast worldwide, but many have struggled to reach profitability in the U.S., the world’s largest market. AI will also be a wildcard. Startups benefit from agility, but incumbents have reams of data and analytics that could help them better anticipate and service client needs. For the incumbent institutions there are risks, but also big opportunities.

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Companies pushing investments and online trading seems to have increased exponentially in the UAE. And we’re starting to see the scams being exposed. It’s very sad that they take advantage of people and their life savings. I seem to be getting more of these calls everyday asking me if I know anything about trading the stock market. I mostly laugh and say I’m not interested. But these people don’t stop with me. They’re taking shots in the dark, calling people off a list and finding people to scam. Please be careful who you follow and who you put your money with. If you don’t have the time to understand investing, fixed deposits are your best bet right now. https://lnkd.in/dnyqmTXK

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Egyptian Fintech Bokra Raises $4.6 Million Pre-Seed Round to Expand Its Offerings Across MENA Region bokra, a fintech company based in Egypt, has secured $4.6 million in a pre-seed funding round. The funds raised will be used to launch the Bokra app, diversify its investment product range, and expand operations across the MENA region. The fintech company asserts that this development will transform wealth management in the MENA region by becoming the inaugural platform to offer goal-based investment and savings products through asset-backed securities. Read more👇 #menaregion #bokra #fintech #fintechfunding KARIM WAHBY Ahmed Nabil Ayman Elsawy

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Entrepreneurs have never had more options when it comes to deciding where to start & grow their businesses. Interesting time to think about founding an AI startup in MENA. Not only are AI regulations more conducive to innovation, but the capital ecosystem is maturing in parallel… “Historically, money managers would have looked further afield when it came to investing their clients’ cash. These days, the relative strength of the knowledge-rich Gulf economies – many of which are investing heavily to diversify away from oil – presents more local opportunities. ‘We’re seeing a lot of interest in private market opportunities, particularly tech start-ups.” #investing #venturecapital #startups #innovation #ai #difc #dubai #uae #mena

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Q1 2024 MENA VC FUNDING Q1 2024 has seen a significant drop in funding by 60% YoY, compared to the same period in 2023. This marks the steepest decline among all EVM regions. We've seen a dip in both non-MEGA deal funding by 35%, and a sharper decline in MEGA deal funding by 76% YoY. Interestingly, deal flow has been declining at a faster rate than funding throughout 2023, ending the year with a 32% YoY decrease. This follows a global trend of eight successive quarters of declining deal flow. It seems the MENA region is echoing this pattern with a similar, but slower, decline compared to 2023. Here the link to MAGNiTT's Q1 2024 Quarterly Update: https://lnkd.in/d7HvdCVh #MENA #Funding #Q12024 #VC

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😅🍿 Unlike my previous post, this one is less dramatic but offers some useful insights into our experience opening bank accounts as a startup in the UAE. After a tough journey, I’m happy to share that three banks finally opened accounts for us. 🤓 Here’s what happened: 🏆 Al Maryah Community Bank was the first to help us. They stayed in touch, gave us regular updates, and kept their promises. It felt smooth and reliable. 🏆 Wio Bank came next, after we escalated the issue a few times and found some helpful contacts within the bank. Despite some initial delays, the process to open the account was quite clear and straightforward. They have a great app and provide virtual cards immediately. It seems like their support team might be a bit overwhelmed with many new applications. 🏆 Mashreq NEO was the third. Their process was also simple and understandable, but not completely finished yet. Surprisingly, for a bank that promotes itself as fully digital, you need to physically sign a document to fully activate your account. This is odd given how many digital signature services are available these days. Regarding the other "conventional" banks we applied to, most didn’t even respond to our applications from a month ago. Even after sending follow-ups, there was no answer. This makes it seem like these banks are not interested in new clients, especially startups. ⁉ Some that did reply had strange requirements for a new startup, such as: 💁‍♂️ Financial statements from the previous period 💁‍♂️ Huge physical offices in the UAE and significant amount of hired staff 💁‍♂️ Or...you should have a personal bank account with this bank and it should have some history there or you should have some funds on saving account It makes you wonder: how can a newly registered company without a bank account have any of these things? How are we supposed to pay for our operational expenses without a bank account? 🤷‍♂️ 🔎 To summarise our experience with the "NEO" banks that successfully opened accounts for us: 👍 Al Maryah Community Bank communicated regularly, gave updates, and eventually opened our account. ✌ Wio Bank needed some escalations and finding the right contacts, but they did open our account. The process is clear and they have a good app with immediate virtual cards. 🤔 Mashreq NEO had a straightforward process, but requiring a physical signature at the end was surprising for a bank that calls itself fully digital. 🙏 We are grateful to the banks that responded and helped us open accounts, and to their staff for their support. This experience shows that the banking sector in the UAE needs to better support startups and new businesses. #UAE #Startups #Banking #BusinessSupport #Entrepreneurship #TechStartups

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Really enjoyed discussing some of the findings from the newly-released 2024 Middle East & Africa Fintech report at Seamless Middle East & Saudi Arabia, last week. 🚀🚀 In case you missed it, UAE is now the number 1️⃣ leading #fintech hub in the MEA region with Dubai alone hosting an estimated half of the total fintechs in the region. Do you agree - talent is more important than funding? What do you think is the biggest predictor of fintech growth? 🔎 Check out the comments below for the link to the full report. #fintech #fintechmiddleeast #fintechafrica #fintechMEA #fintechreport #fintechdevelopment #financialinclusion #digitaldisruption #economy Mark Walker Matouk Bassiouny Seamless Xtra The Fintech Times Visa PayTabs Global

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Egyptian-Based Fintech MNZL Raises $3.5m Seed Funding Round to Scale Operations Egyptian fintech startup MNZL has raised $3.5 million in seed funding to enhance its technology and expand operations, aiming to empower more Egyptians. Read more👇 #fintech #Egyptianbasedfintech #MNZL Shahinaz Hussein Ehab Gayed Abdalwahab Mohamed Nour Hazem John Armanyos

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Open Banking works in the Middle East. They are way ahead and fintech startups should look at this region. Speaking on this topic later today here in Qatar at the Khaleej Times Events Banking Innovation and Technology Summit. I am here to learn more about what is happening in this region. Sidd Gandhi Awdesh Chetal Ali Khadjavi Malik Shishtawi

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When we started Fuse Finance, we were asked many times - why the Middle East? 🧐 This region is exciting. James Smith and I have built a number of payment products, and never have we found a place so in need of new infrastructure to support its growth. We’d tried expanding cross border products to these markets, but never succeeded for a variety of reasons…👇🏻 1️⃣ Local banks not being able to work with international companies or use cases. 2️⃣ Lack of integration between individual countries within the region, causing huge amounts of work to build a product that spans the the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and beyond. 3️⃣ New and ambiguous regulations not yet tested, with only a small number of authorised companies. But there are so many reasons to look at the MENA region as the next hotspot for growth and innovation…🔥 👉🏻 The GCC has some of the wealthiest countries in the world, and they’re investing heavily into the future of their economies, cities and populations. The total value of sovereign wealth in the region in 2023 was over $4.1 trillion USD. 👉🏻 60% of the population of the Middle East is under 30 years old - this is a market where innovation and progress are front of mind as younger generations are taking the lead. 👉🏻 In 2022, the UAE attracted over 22bn USD in Foreign Direct Investment, a 10% growth vs the previous year - the world is looking to the UAE as an opportunity for the future. 👉🏻 Remittances are booming, MENA is responsible for 3 of the top 10 remittance corridors globally and the UAE hosts the second largest outbound remittance market in the world closely followed by Saudi Arabia. 👉🏻 Regulators here are amongst the most forward thinking in the world. With Saudi Vision 2030, the UAEs ‘We the Vision 2031’, Bahrain Vision 2030, Qatar Vision 2030, all stating Fintech as a key source and target of growth - regulators are adding payment and stored value licensing at an exponential rate. It’s really rewarding to be part of MENAs journey which seemingly gets stronger and stronger every year 🚀 #mena #middleeast #gcc #payments #fintech

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