Egypt: E-commerce platform Wasla receives investment
Contact Financial Holding, Egypt’s largest non-bank financial services provider, announced the completion of a strategic investment into Wasla, an e-commerce super-app. With the tie-up, Contact will support Wasla’s product rollout and regional expansion with a series of investments totaling up to $9 million.
Contact, (formerly Sarwa Capital), is Egypt’s largest consumer finance platform, transforming the way people access finance since 2001. Being the first financial services platform to introduce advanced credit scoring and collection mechanisms in Egypt, this strategic investment adds to Contact’s growing footprint in fintech, and especially e-commerce, allowing Contact to engage consumers at the beginning of their e-commerce journey while they search, discover, and shop online.
This investment reinforce’s Contacts quest to enable tech-first ventures in Egypt’s financing ecosystem. Focused on optimising the end-to-end online shopping experience, Wasla is the first emerging markets mobile web browser and desktop extension that helps users save money, pay securely, build their credit profiles and gain access to flexible and convenient financing. Currently, Wasla is focused on optimising the e-commerce search and discovery experience, by helping users save money online through aggregating deals, for a network of over 100, local and regional, e-commerce merchants (similar to US startup Honey, which sold to PayPal in 2019 for $4 billion).
Operating as an extension to Contact’s core business, Wasla will allow Contact to move into adjacent market segments and attract new user groups.
Hazem Moussa, chairman of Contact Financial commented, “We are thrilled to be supporting the Wasla team build out their vision of a digital ecosystem enabling online shopping for all. With over 20 years of innovation in consumer financial services, this strategic investment demonstrates Contact’s drive to multiply its reach and empower businesses with its advanced credit services platform.”
Mahmoud El Said, CEO of Wasla commented, “Having personally worked with the Contact team before, I was always amazed at what they have been able to build as a leading consumer finance platform in the region. This is why we believe this deep partnership, leveraging Contact’s market position, experience, and fully-digitised loan origination process, will allow us to expand our offering catering to the online shopping experience by introducing completely new ways to help consumers save money on each online purchase, pay securely, build their credit profiles, and borrow flexibly.”
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