Egypt’s Dominant Fintech Fawry Takes On SME Financing In Growth Push

Fawry, a prominent fintech player in Egypt, plans to add business lending to its portfolio, in line with what the company has described as a long-term growth strategy of expanding its service offering and diversifying its revenue streams.

The publicly-listed company, a leading e- payments solutions provider, announced today that its subsidiary, Fawry Microfinance, has received preliminary approval from the Financial Regulatory Authority to add Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) financing to its expanding suite of financial services.

This latest addition comes as part of a wider strategy centred on expanding Fawry’s service offering and diversifying its revenue streams to continue penetrating new and currently underserved segments across the country.

With Founder/CEO Ashraf Sabry at the helm since the company launched in 2008, Fawry has grown to become Egypt’s largest e-payments platform, valued at more than USD 2 B. Today, Fawry — whose stakeholders include the National Bank of Egypt — helps around 35 million banked and unbanked Egyptians pay their bills each month. In 2022, Fawry processed over USD 10 B in transactions and reported revenues of USD 200 M and net profits of USD 50 M.

In recent years, the company has launched Fawry Microfinance, a subsidiary tasked with improving financial services for entrepreneurs. Currently, Fawry offers a wide range of financial services to consumers and businesses through more than 225,000 locations in Egypt. Sabry and his team took the company public on the Egyptian stock exchange in 2019.

Following this preliminary approval, Fawry Microfinance plans to continue developing its offering and laying the foundations for a ramp-up of operations once the new service launches later this year. Ultimately, Fawry Microfinance is being primed to work in tandem with the rest of the company’s subsidiaries to provide a complementary offering to its customers and further cement Fawry’s position in the Egyptian market.

The Fawry boss, Sabry, commented: “I am tremendously proud of the efforts of Fawry Microfinance and its management team in attaining this approval from the Financial Regulatory Authority. This decision is sure to usher in a new era for Fawry, one which has been in the making for several months.

“Once officially launched, this latest addition to our service portfolio will enable us to tap into new, currently underserved segments of the population once more highlighting Fawry’s role as a pioneer of financial inclusion in Egypt. We are confident that this approval and the ultimate rollout of Fawry Microfinance’s additional services will not only help boost the company’s financial results but also allow us to further develop a synergetic offering geared towards both businesses and individuals,” he added.