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.

It was something that Cairo-based shop owner Nader Shawky had come to dread: paying his phone bill. Every month, he trekked to the offices of his mobile provider where he and dozens of others stood in line—sometimes for up to two hours—to settle their bills. It was, he admits, a maddening process.

IFC invested $6 million in Fawry in 2013 and helped guide founder Ashraf Sabry and his team as they built their business. Now the 12-year-old company handles 2.5 million transactions a day. In 2018 Fawry processed 40 billion Egyptian pounds (about $2.5 billion) in electronic payments. Earlier in 2019, Fawry became Egypt’s largest financial technology firm to list on the national stock exchange. It now employs 1,600 people.

With a population of over 100 million people, Egypt is a land of opportunity for consumer services providers. In a country where payment procedures are often slow, fragmented and complex, Fawry identified a gap in the market for a simple, secure omnichannel payment gateway.

Fawry now supports millions of transactions daily for consumers and business through more than 90,000 locations (including groceries, pharmacies, stationaries and post offices), as well as through multiple alternative channels, including online, ATMs, and mobile wallets. The company’s client base and service offerings continue to expand, leading to rapid data growth. Abbas comments: "Our data has doubled in just the last eight months, and we expect it to grow even faster in the years to come.”

Mobile phones, which have been adopted faster than any other technology in human history, are the visible expressions of a technology-oriented consumer (Jack and Suri, 2010). Although this image is mainly associated with the iPhone in Asian, European, or North American contexts, the spread of mobile phone technology has been even faster and successful in Africa.

Safaricom launched new services as early as 2013, with M-Shwari, Fuliza and KCB M-Pesa came later to provide savings and micro-loans. By 2019, these “apps within apps” will account for two-thirds of M-Pesa’s revenues (84.4 billion shillings in total). “Remittances are still performing well and are up 14.6 per cent over the previous year,” said Sateesh Kamath, Safaricom’s chief financial officer.

Check M-PESA balance When you perform an M-PESA transaction, you will receive a text message that confirms your transaction and tells you your new balance. You can also check your M-PESA balance by going to “My account” on the M-PESA phone menu.

By any stretch of the currently available facts, the service that accounts for more than 60 percent of Kenya’s GDP in transactions was conceived by British professionals. The company commissioned with developing the idea, Sagentia, into a workable technology was British. Additionally, the company that owns the intellectual property rights to the idea, Vodafone, is British and, lastly, it was funded in its initial stages by the British Government.

The successful adoption of M-Pesa in Kenya reverberated across the African startup scene. It acted as a catalyzer and a signal for young entrepreneurs in Kenya and Africa as a whole: revolutionary ideas could be successfully implemented in Africa and generate both business opportunities and a development path for local communities.

Cash merchants are mainly super users, who resell their own working capital balances, with no more access to the M-PESA platform than any other customers, except that they have higher transaction limits.

I argue that the work of ‘human ATMs’ constitutes both the ‘front story’ and the ‘backstory’ of contemporary modes of accumulation unfolding in Kenya. Their labour is formally exploited while broader forms of work required to build and maintain the social and material networks on which Safaricom depends are expropriated, forming the basis of new frontiers of accumulation. This process is mirrored in Safaricom's contemporary business strategy, which is premised on enclosing people's everyday habits and social networks in their digital forms as sites of innovation and market-making.

Through mobile payment services like M-Pesa, the standard of living in Kenya has improved greatly. Market traders, debt collectors, farmers, and cab drivers don’t need to carry around or transact in a large amount of cash. This means that the occurrence of theft, robbery, and fraud is reduced. Also, individuals and business owners don’t have to wait in long lines for hours to make their electricity and water bill payments because these can be made using M-Pesa.

The Kenyan government's announcement of a new 10 percent tax in March 2013 threatened the future prospects of M-Pesa, Safaricom's mobile money transfer service, which had revolutionized the way money moved in Kenya

The Kenyan government's announcement of a new 10 percent tax in March 2013 threatened the future prospects of M-Pesa, Safaricom's mobile money transfer service, which had revolutionized the way money moved in Kenya.

The Kenyan government's announcement of a new 10 percent tax in March 2013 threatened the future prospects of M-Pesa, Safaricom's mobile money transfer service, which had revolutionized the way money moved in Kenya.

Founded in 2010 in the United Kingdom by Ismail Ahmed, an economics student at the University of London, WorldRemit has grown its geographical coverage quite fast. You can now send to 150 countries around the world with thousands of well-placed payout locations. However, the company still has ground to cover in terms of partnerships with financial institutions and mobile money companies to strengthen its global footprint.

Remittances are believed to directly touch the lives of 1 billion people globally, maintaining millions of receiving families above the poverty line with remittances often representing 60 per cent or more of household income. Globally, women represent almost half of the 258 million migrants and back home in the countries of origin, women represent the majority of remittance recipients.

Mobile money services that allow customers to transfer funds using their phones have proved hugely popular in parts of Africa, particularly where people have less access to traditional bank accounts.

tance as easy as sending an instant message.Xpress Money is one of the fastest growing instant money transfer com

Ismail Ahmed, founder and CEO at WorldRemit, comments: “We want to offer our customers the widest and most convenient choice of payout options. Xpress Money is a trusted and dependable money transfer brand with a fantastic network of agents across the world. Our partnership will extend our footprint into new territories and will enable even more people to make secure, instant money transfers.”

This has its roots in Western Union’s early activities in the African continent. As the first formal mover in the money transfer market, it worked to establish long-standing exclusivity agreements with all major African banks and money transfer agents, barring them from working with competitors. Such exclusivity agreements have propelled Western Union to a near-monopoly position in key African corridors, and have prevented the industry from being competitive.

PayPal. It is not possible to send directly to Malawi using this service with a normal account balance. The balance will need to be withdrawn from a linked bank account. DZ Bank and its branches do issue VISA/MasterCard cards that you can then link to your PayPal account. From there, you can load your PayPal account and send it to anyone in Malawi. 

Easy-to-use website. Signing up and sending money can be done in as little as a few minutes, and support can be accessed through phone, email, live chat and FAQs.Worldwide network. Customers in more than 50 countries can send funds to over 150 countries using a variety of methods, including bank transfers, cash pickup at thousands of locations, door-to-door delivery, delivery to services like Alipay and more.Flexible payment options. Pay with a credit or debit card, from your bank account, through Apple or Google Pay and even with prepaid cards.Fast transfers. Cash pickups, WorldRemit Wallet transfers and airtime top-ups are typically available instantly after sending, while mobile money and bank deposits may take one or more business days to process.

Digital money transfer service WorldRemit has launched new cash pick up services in Algeria. With the WorldRemit app or website, people in more than 50 countries can send instant money transfers to more than 125 destinations. WorldRemit customers can now send money to be collected as cash from any branch of Trust Bank Algeria.