Digital Banking Platform Nexta Raises $3 Million from Egypt’s eFinance

Nexta, an Egypt-based digital banking platform, has raised a $3 million investment from e-Finance Group, a state-owned provider of digital payments solutions.

Founded by Ahmed Hisham in 2021, Nexta aims to be ‘’the next generation of banking’’ in Egypt. According to the startup, Nexta will provide users with prepaid cards to transfer payments to one another without needing to set up a bank account. At the same time, the app will enable users to track their spending, amongst other features.

“Nexta is among the promising companies financed by the group within several targeted investments,” Ibrahim Sarhan, Chairman and CEO of e-Finance tells StartupScene. “It’s worth noting that the Group took part in establishing Nclude—an investment fund—to invest in emerging fintech companies, thus improving the current and future direction of FinTech in Egypt.”

Last year, Nexta acquired a provisional license from the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE), and it is now in the process of obtaining the CBE’s final approval to launch its banking app in the coming weeks. This investment follows Nexta’s $2.2 million pre-Seed round raised earlier this year, bringing the total amount raised to $5.2 million since its founding in 2021. The new funding will be used to officially launch the app in the next few weeks.

Fintech is a growing sector in Egypt’s startup ecosystem. In H1 2022, investments in fintech and fintech-enabled businesses reached an all time high of $167 million, a 12x increase compared to 2017, according to Fintech Investment-Focused H1 2022 Landscape Review. Some startup’s receiving the lion’s share of funding include Paymob, raising $50 million; Telda raising $20 million; and Lucky raising $25 million.