- MoneyFellows announces the first closing of its series B equity round of 31M USD
- This investment will support MoneyFellows to become the #1 financial platform in Middle East & Africa by 2025
- The mobile-based Egyptian fintech digitizes the concept of money circles (ROSCAs), making it more convenient, secure, manageable and automate
30 October 2022, Cairo, Egypt,
MoneyFellows, one of the leading Egyptian fintech platforms, announces the first close of its Series B round with a $31 million investment led by CommerzVentures, Middle East Venture Partners (“MEVP”), and Arzan Venture Capital. Invenfin, National Investment Company (“NIC”) as well as existing investors such as Partech, Sawari Ventures, 4DX and P1Ventures also participated in the round.
MoneyFellows is a mobile-based platform that digitizes money circles or Rotating
Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCAs) that are widely known as “Gameya” in Egypt and other
Arab countries. MoneyFellows is the first to offer next generation digital RoSCAs globally. Users can effectively manage and plan their financial obligations and achieve their financial goals through the platform. MoneyFellows offers a secured and convenient alternative to traditional finance that is more social, culturally favourable, affordable, and incentivizing.
With hundreds of thousands of monthly active users and a solid 8x YoY growth the company has become one of the favourite financial apps for Egyptians.
The round will allow MoneyFellows to accelerate its exponential growth by diversifying its portfolio of services and expanding their product offerings across the B2C & B2B segments, as well as its geographical expansion across Africa and Asia. The market is largely untapped and ripe for disruption with 2.4 billion people globally, using money circles through traditional channels.
“We are proud to share with our stakeholders and our users the progress and growth which led MoneyFellows to become one of the market-leading FinTech’s in Egypt, facilitating financial inclusion and digital transformation in the country. We wouldn’t have reached such an important funding milestone without the firm backing of our existing investors who understand and support the company’s vision as well as the perseverance and belief of our new partners in the company and the team’s ability to execute.” said Ahmed Wadi, Founder and CEO of MoneyFellows. “The support we received from leading local and global venture capital firms in times of instability and scarcity of growth capital rounds is a testament to their faith and confidence in our business model, our team and the overall opportunity that lies in the Egyptian market” Ahmed added.
Hangwi Muambadzi, Venture Partner at CommerzVentures said “MoneyFellows is already a standout national success story, and we are incredibly excited to partner with the company as they begin the next phase in their growth journey. Ahmed and his stellar team have delivered a transformative solution that will continue to enable millions to achieve their financial goals. Rotating Savings and Credit Associations have been deeply embedded in emerging markets across the world for centuries. It is brilliant to see this new digital RoSCA-driven model emerge from Africa, creating a trusted model of delivering financial solutions and setting a new standard on using localised solutions to solve for global opportunities.”
Jad El Boustani, Managing Director and Germine Bouchnack, Associate and Egypt’s Operations Manager at MEVP said “What an inspiring journey MoneyFellows have gone through! We have been following the company since its launch and we are impressed by what Ahmed and his team have achieved. Their ability to crack such a difficult model, enables them to provide a highly recurring and sticky financing option to a largely untapped and underbanked population. MoneyFellows is on track to become the go-to platform for financial services in emerging markets. We are very excited to become part of the company’s journey!”
Stuart Gast, Invenfin CEO commented: “Digitizing widely used and culturally familiar money circles will be a key driver for achieving greater financial inclusion, not only in Egypt but in other emerging markets too. Invenfin is proud to partner with the MoneyFellows team and co-investors in delivering transformative solutions in these key and fast-growing markets.”
Laith Zraikat, Partner at Arzan Venture Capital commented: “This is the second investment of our new Arzan VC Fund III and our largest ticket to date. MoneyFellows embodies the kind of teams, ideas and products that we love to support; strong teams working on big ideas that change lives across the world. The innovation and uniqueness of the technology developed by the team has resulted in a highly scalable and frictionless experience for its users who traditionally opted out of the rosca model due to the many barriers and risks involved. We are excited to be working with Ahmed, the team and our co-investors to make this dream a reality and bring MoneyFellows to the rest of the world.”