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Fawry’s fortune is partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic that caused more people to place a high demand for its e-payment offerings. Being the leading fintech company in Egypt, Fawry’s revenue for the first half of 2020 increased by 47% to EGP 549.26M, from EGP 373.33 generated in 2019.Fawry has joined the rank of African companies that have become unicorns. Jumia was the first to attain unicorn status after listing on the New York Stock Exchange. Interswitch also became a unicorn after Visa acquired minority stakes last year. All three have attained global recognition, credibility, and reputation. The unicorn status creates a good public perception for investors and potential customers.

Fawry’s fortune is partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic that caused more people to place a high demand for its e-payment offerings. Being the leading fintech company in Egypt, Fawry’s revenue for the first half of 2020 increased by 47% to EGP 549.26M, from EGP 373.33 generated in 2019.

Ashraf Sabry and Mohamed Okasha founded Fawry in 2008. It has an online payment gateway for business owners to transact with customers via cash, credit cards, and e-wallets. In 2019, Fawry listed about 36% (254.6M) of its ordinary shares on the Egyptian Stock Exchange. It initially sold at EGP 6.46 per share, and then it tripled to EGP 18.78 at a market cap of EGP 13.3B in July 2020. After going public, other investors took an interest that led to a significant increase by over 300% in its stock price since its debut at the Egyptian Stock Exchange.

Savings and investing is a critical part of building wealth and economic development, and Egypt’s youth needs a mobile-first platform like Thndr to open the floodgates of investing in the coming decades. Platforms like Thndr have seen great success in other markets across the world, and Thndr is built with keen attention to the local nuances and preferences of the Egyptian investor in mind.

Egyptian mobile investment app, Thndr has become the first brokerage firm to receive regulatory approval from the Financial Regulatory Association (FRA) in the last 12 years. The financial startup allows users to link their Egyptian bank account, and trade, invest, and profit from Egyptian stocks, bonds, and indices. The decision by FRA to give the startup regulatory approval comes after Egypt reforms its financial regulations on new companies with the recently approved Banking Act passed last month which allows more companies to become involved with financial trading and investment.

Before the passing of the Banking Act in July 2020, the only financial apps available for Egyptians were applications that helped you put aside money for saving. However, that is set to change as companies like Thndr take advantage of the new space given to financial technology companies to allow users to invest in the Egyptian stock exchange from their homes. Stock investment apps have become popular in the last few years as a way to not only save money but to make savings grow over time. While there is always risk involved with stock trading, Thndr hoping to provide users with education on how to invest in order to be more financial secure.

Fawry is yet to announce the results for fourth quarter of 2020 but for the first nine months of last year, the company made about $57 million (EGP 892.7 million) in revenue, an 45.2 percent increase year-on-year basis. For the same period, it doubled its net profit (on a YoY basis) to $7.5 million (EGP 119 million). The company has been witnessing decent growth over the last few years but it seems that Covid-19 has accelerated it even further.

CAIRO (Reuters) - The initial public offering for Egyptian digital payments company Fawry was oversubscribed by 30.3 times at a price of 6.46 Egyptian pounds (39 U.S. cents), data from the Egyptian stock exchange showed on Monday.

Fawry plans to list 36% of its share capital, worth up to 1.6 billion Egyptian pounds ($97 million), in the flotation.It said Actis, Banque Misr and National Bank of Egypt would each be offered about 7% of the stock, and 5% would be offered to retail investors.A private placing representing the remaining 10% of the share capital was 15.9 times oversubscribed, raising about 360 million Egyptian pounds, investment bank EFG Hermes said last Thursday.

“The subscriptions for both the public and private offerings for Fawry were large and strong because the industry itself is new to the market and has greater than average growth,” said Radwa El-Swaify, head of research at Pharos Securities Brokerage.

EasyEquities aims to disrupt and remove the barriers to entry in local and international stock markets, making the purchase of shares easy, cheap and fun, and ensuring that anyone can own shares in the companies they love.

EasyEquities (EE), a subsidiary of JSE listed Purple Group Limited (PPE), is an online platform which allows anyone to buy shares in the brands and companies they love. For as little as R5, $10 or whatever amount they have available to invest (and with no monthly brokerage fees) newbie and seasoned investors alike can grow their wealth. EE powered by First World Trader (Pty), as an authorized financial services provider, has a strong focus on customer satisfaction. Our mission is to be a respected and recognized financial services provider. Treating our customers fairly is a primary objective of the conceptualization, creation and launch of the platform.

For wealth management, Abacus is perhaps the most visible platform. The five-year-old NSE-licensed company offers users the ability to deposit, buy, sell, and trade unit trusts, bonds, and equities on their platform.Another startup is the earlier-mentioned Abojani which is an agent of AIB Capital for the purchase of local stocks. Founded in 2018, Abojani claims to have up to KES 40 Mn (roughly USD 400 K) under management for 150 clients in both stocks and mutual funds, as its CEO revealed to WeeTracker.Other platforms for wealth management in Kenya are Britam Asset Managers for mutual funds and Scope Markets for offshore stocks via Contract for Difference (CFD).

Founded in 2019 by Uber Egypt’s former General Manager Ahmad Hammouda, Thndr is starting with a Robinhood-like mobile-first equities trading platform that enables people to invest in stocks in The Egyptian Exchange.

Ahmad Hammouda, the co-founder and CEO of Thndr, said, “Our vision is to put wealth in the hands of everyday individuals. With the rise of technology, and the foresight of a very supportive Financial Regulatory Authority, we can make this vision come to life — Egypt is expected to be the 7th largest economy by 2030 and has more than 100 mn people, most of which are young and are looking for a convenient and digital way to invest their money. That’s why we are excited to bring a new breed of young investors to the market.”

This is a super exciting time for Egyptian fintechs. For Fawry to reach a market cap of $1 billion within one year of its IPO is quite impressive and is a moment to celebrate. This will help the whole industry and will open more doors for fintechs to receive funds and make partial exits.

Commenting on the news, Okasha told WAYA: “This is a super exciting time for Egyptian fintechs. For Fawry to reach a market cap of $1 billion within one year of its IPO is quite impressive and is a moment to celebrate. This will help the whole industry and will open more doors for fintechs to receive funds and make partial exits.”Fintechs and electronic banking companies have seen a huge increase in demand as a result of the pandemic. Fawry saw an increase of more than 50% of the company’s value before the Covid-19 crisis. This number grew exponentially during the crisis.The company went public on the Egyptian Exchange in August 2019, since then its stock price has increased by over 300%. The initial cost of one share at the company was EGP 6.46.According to Fawry’s website, it handles around 2.1 million transactions daily and collected $2.43 billion last year. It has approximately 20 million customers.

The future is really exciting for us and links into why we participate in these fintech festivals. We think what we’ve proven in South Africa is scalable to other markets, especially those with similar setup to South Africa five years ago. Our focus is largely on emerging markets and seeking to partner our capability into a market opportunity, where the partner brings local knowledge and regulatory understanding and we bring platform capability. There needs to be a level of maturity and fintech support that enables our business model. There must be a very strong payments layer and smartphone penetration rates must be good. If those are in place and there’s a low propensity for retail stock investors to be investing in the local stock market, we start to be interested.

This report provides a comprehensive view on mobile payment / mobile wallet market size and growth dynamics, industry dynamics, retail spending, consumer attitude and behaviour, and competitive landscape in Ethiopia.

Nigerian fintech firm Carbon — an early-stage financial services startup based in Lagos — has posted on its website financials audited by KPMG.This comes four months after the company obtained a credit rating as a pre-IPO venture. Carbon — which recently rebranded its OneFi holding company and PayLater product titles into one name — plans to continue releasing its financial results on an annual basis, co-founder and CEO Chijioke Dozie told TechCrunch.This may not be totally unheard of in other global tech markets, but for startups in Africa’s big tech hubs — such as Nigeria — it’s a rarity.One of the first glimpses into startup financials in Nigeria came when Jumia shareholder Rocket Internet went public in 2014, which required it to include limited Jumia data in its annual report. The accompanying prospectus to Jumia’s listing this year on the New York Stock Exchange offered the most expansive financial data to date on a tech venture operating in Africa.Prior to this — and still for the most part — companies in the continent’s (mostly) pre-public (earlier-stage) startup hubs — such as Nigeria — provide little to no financial performance info.“Typically, in the local market, we have not seen a lot of voluntary transparency or the availability of data,” said Lexi Novitske — a Lagos-based VC investor at Acuity Venture Partners.“Most startups are concerned such disclosure could expose losses, give market intel to competitors or attract unwanted attention from regulators. It could also lead to negative negotiation leverage if partners saw that they were making good returns.”So why’d Carbon go to the trouble of putting its pre-public accounting out in the open for anyone to see?

Clients and recruiting were two reasons. “From a customer perspective, we are trying to get people to trust us with their financial services…so they can see this is the institution I’m dealing with and this is their financial position,” explained Carbon’s Dozie.Carbon has evolved from its original focus as an online lender to offer a broader array of mobile-based financial services — including payments, investment products, credit reports and business banking services. In March, the company acquired Nigerian payment solutions company Amplify for an undisclosed amount.By stats offered by Briter Bridges and a 2018 WeeTracker survey, fintech now receives the bulk of VC capital and deal-flow to African startups, many of which are attempting to reach the continent’s large unbanked and underbanked populations.Carbon fits into that category and its CEO believes being upfront about the startup’s financial position will attract top talent. “From a recruitment perspective, we want recruits to know we have good prospects — that this is a company that’s doing well and wants to keep doing well,” said Dozie.That impression is buoyed by Carbon’s initial results, which were fairly positive for a Series A-stage startup. The company had revenues in 2018 of $10 million, according to its online annual report, and turned a profit of around $500,000.It’s helped with recruiting interest, according to Dozie, who said he’d marked an increase in candidates inquiring about open positions since the results were posted.

we don’t get considered because investors don’t really think that you can get the results or this performance in the markets that we’re in,” he added — noting that Carbon has operations in Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa and is considering expansion in Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, DRC and Egypt.Investor Lexi Novitske thinks Carbon offering financial performance data is a good thing for Africa’s tech ecosystem. “The move builds trust from clients, partners or investors in a market where there is not a lot of openness,” she said. “I am encouraged to see how other companies will react. My hope is that more will openly report their own metrics…”Dozie says the company will continue to post audited financials on an annual basis, even if they show losses. If the startup continues to expand, attract capital and talent and grow revenues, other Nigerian fintech firms may follow suit.

As mentioned in the last article, it is not possible to define exactly what a robo-advisor is, as the individual providers offer a range of services of varying breadth. In fact, robo-advisors have long since ceased to offer mere recommendations or advice, and most providers are steadily expanding their services into a fully integrated solution. Accordingly, people now associate a robo-advisor with a platform that can also be used to make an investment directly (see [Bloch/Vins 2017, 114]). However, this service, for example, is linked to certain regulatory requirements, which are presented below. It should be noted here that this is the regulatory framework in Germany. In terms of regulation, four business models can be distinguished in the area of robo advisory services:

Less than six months after becoming the first billion-dollar technology company in Egypt, Fawry has hit another milestone by surpassing the $2 billion market cap for the first time. Its stock has doubled in the last six months and closed at an all-time high of EGP 46.90 today, pushing its market cap to over EGP 32 billion. This makes it the fourth most valuable company listed on The Egyptian Exchange (EGX) and it seems that it’s only a matter of days before it takes the second position. The Egyptian payments firm had gone public in August 2020 by listing its shares on EGX at the price of EGP 6.46 per share. The share price has surged over 7x after company’s public market debut about eigtheen months ago.

The company is keen to work with companies specialising in the financial technology (fintech) solutions field, to contribute to the development of the Egyptian capital market sector.The most prominent of these partnerships includes a contract with the Egyptian Company for Information Dissemination (EGID).

Startup and equities trading platform, Thndr Securities Brokerage, has obtained approval from Egypt’s Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA) to practice securities brokerage activities.Thndr is the first company in the Middle East to announce the provision of a zero commission on securities trading service.Its activities take place through an advanced electronic platform that enables dealers in the Egyptian Exchange (EGX) to view the latest developments and indicators at zero cost.

Being the leading the electornic payments player in Egypt, Fawry is arguably the biggest benificiary of acceleration of digital payments there. It offers hundreds of electronic payment services through its network of over over close to 200,000 service points across Egypt – whcih include ATMs, mobile wallets, retail shops, post offices, and vendor kiosks. Fawry has introduced many new payments and lending products for both consumers and businesses over the last tweleve months and is apparently on additional new services too that are expected to be rolled out within the next few months.

The Egyptian payments firm had gone public in August 2020 by listing its shares on EGX at the price of EGP 6.46 per share. The share price has surged over 7x after company’s public market debut about eigtheen months ago.

A new Kenyan startup called Abacus (www.abacus.co.ke) is a licensed data vendor with the Nairobi Securities Exchange(NSE).Its been in existence since 2015 and just early this year,in partnership with Genghis Capital and Chase bank,they began offering subscribers the ability to deposit,buy,sell and trade unit trusts,bonds and equities on their platform.

A new Kenyan startup called Abacus (www.abacus.co.ke) is a licensed data vendor with the Nairobi Securities Exchange(NSE).Its been in existence since 2015 and just early this year,in partnership with Genghis Capital and Chase bank,they began offering subscribers the ability to deposit,buy,sell and trade unit trusts,bonds and equities on their platform.

All in all,Abacus allows you to easily get started on the road to investing in the NSE,its available on the web through www.abacus.co.ke and the android app is available on the Google play store,A basic subscriber account is easy to set up and allows one to easily get started with practise trading with virtual funds and realtime NSE data on market open so that one can learn.

An Egyptian digital payments firm has quadrupled in value during the pandemic, helped by a government push to reduce citizens’ heavy reliance on cash. Investors and analysts are split on whether the stock rally has further legs.

A 300% rally from a mid-March low has boosted its market value to 20 billion Egyptian pounds ($1.3 billion). That puts Fawry among the country’s 10 most valuable companies alongside firms such as Telecom Egypt Co. and Elswedy Electric Co., which generate many times more revenue and profit.

Abacus is a web and mobile software that lets you keep tabs on whatever is going on with the Nairobi Securities exchange in real time. And now, the team behind it has launched an Android app. The app was launched today and users now have access to regular updates from activities on the Nairobi Securities Exchange. The Abacus team, led by Joel Macharia as the CEO and Kevin Omwega as the director, have more than ten years of market experience. Abacus was one of the startups that participated in 2015 DEMO Africa event.