Only a month old, Egyptian digital banking platform, Telda, announced a pre-seed funding round of $5 million that would enable it to digitise spending, sending, and saving money for Egyptians.
Although 49 percent of Egypt’s population connected to the internet, technological innovations continue to thrive, leading to the expansion of payments platform in the country.
Telda’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Ahmed Sabbah, expressed his delight in partaking in easing the pain of payments in Egypt and “the region”.
He said, to TechCrunch, “I was fond of the idea, and it was coming from a huge pain of payments we had in Egypt and the region. And for me, I was kind of like waiting for this to happen in Egypt, or if not, I thought I’ll tap into the opportunity someday.
“Youcef (Telda’s CTO) and I have been like watching out the space for a while when the first digital bank started like six years ago, and watching how they grew in markets where we think banking is more mature than this region. So imagine an opportunity in a region like Egypt where banking is even way, way less mature.”
As more Egyptians embrace technology, encouraged by the government’s digitisation efforts – a collaboration with Estonia to create digital ID cards for 85 million of its citizens, digital payments would be slowly be adopted, as only 4 percent of the country’s paopulation is cashless.
READ ALSO: AU, Ecobank Offers $2m Fund For Nigerian MSMEs, Others
Rise of Telda
Noting some of the barriers creators of Telda encountered, Sabbah described the process of getting regulators to come on board with the firm’s goal of providing easy financial services to consumers as one of the “hardest parts”.
Sabbah said, “First movers will usually have to make all the effort with the regulators and with the bank and try to pave the way. So this was one of the hardest parts — convincing regulators to trust and regulate our banking business and to provide payment financial services to our consumers.”
He added, “That means basically trying to be as independent as possible from the infrastructure of the bank. This was quite crucial for us to be able to move right and as fast as a startup, not as slow and pretty much tied to the pace of the bank’s technology and operations.”
On the widespread adoption of digital payment services in Egypt, the head of microfinance at the Egyptian Financial Regulatory Authority, Gamal Khalifa, said that once the benefits of embracing the system are noted, “things will change a lot.”
“They’ll find these services to be secure and easy to use. They’ll be able to receive and make payments, receive loans, and save money on transport costs,” he added.
In the country of over 100 million, there are 20 million active mobile payment accounts in Egypt, leapfrogging from 1.1 percent in 2014 to 22.8 percent in 2017.
This is indicative of the country’s slow but steady acceptance of non-traditional means of payment.
