Egyptian FinTech Money Fellows Raises $31M for Expansion
Egyptian FinTech company Money Fellows has raised $31 million to diversify its portfolio of services and expand across Africa and Asia, the company said on Sunday.
The Series B round, its fourth funding round since 2018, was led by Germany’s CommerzVentures, Middle East Venture Partners and Kuwait’s Arzan Venture Capital.
South Africa’s Invenfin and Kuwait’s National Investments Company, as well as existing investors, such as ParTech, Egypt’s Sawari Ventures, Africa-focused 4DX Ventures and P1Ventures also participated in the round.
“We would not have reached such an important funding milestone without the solid support of our existing investors who understand and support the company’s vision as well as the tenacity and faith of our new partners in the company and the team’s ability to execute,” said Ahmed Wadi, Founder and CEO of Money Fellows.
“The support we received from leading local and global venture capital firms during times of instability and scarcity of growth capital rounds is a testament to their faith and trust in our business model, our team and the overall opportunity that lies in the Egyptian market.”
Founded in 2016, Money Fellows is a mobile-based platform that digitizes money circles or rotating savings and credit unions.
A revolving savings and credit association is a group of individuals who together act as an informal financial institution, known as “gameya” in Egypt and other Arab countries.
The market is largely untapped and ripe for disruption with 2.4 billion people globally using money circles through traditional channels, according to Money Fellows.
“Revolving savings and credit unions have been deeply rooted in emerging markets around the world for centuries,” said Hangwi Muambadzi, venture partner at CommerzVentures, which manages €550 million ($548 million) across three funds.
“It is brilliant to see this new digital ROSCA-powered model emerging from Africa, creating a trusted model for delivering financial solutions and setting a new standard for using localized solutions to solve global opportunities.”
Money Fellows has partnered with several payment providers and financial institutions, including Fawry in 2019, Banque Misr and Mastercard in 2021, and Vodafone Cash this year.
It has raised a total of $36.6 million, starting with $600,000 in a seed round from 500 startups and angel investors in Dubai. It raised $1 million in 2019 and $4 million in 2020.
The app has more than four million downloads and more than 250,000 active users.
The financial technology industry remained the highest-funded sector across emerging venture markets in the first half of 2022, more than tripling to nearly $1.68 billion in the first half of 2022 from a year ago, a Magnitt report showed in August.
While roughly two-thirds of the capital used was raised in the first quarter of the year, there was a 52 percent drop in funding in the second quarter and a 44 percent drop in the number of deals, the startup data platform said in the study.
Payment solutions was the top subsector for investors in 2022, attracting 42 percent of all investments made in FinTech, with annual funding growth of 152 percent, Magnitt said.
Magnitt’s study showed that FinTech investments in Mena amounted to $561 million, with Nigeria as the top destination and a third of the total. The African nation, along with the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Kenya and South Africa, accounted for three-quarters of total FinTech investments.
Updated: October 30, 2022, 5:19 p.m
