Orascom Financial Holding to Launch New Fintech with EXCEL Systems

Egypt's Orascom Financial Holding (OFH) has announced that it has partnered with software development company, EXCEL Systems, to launch a yet-to-be-named new fintech company that will focus on and specialise in digital payments, with serial, Mohamed Aboulnaga, serving as CEO. As per the announcement, OFH will own a majority stake of 79.9% of the company, which will launch with paid-in-capital of EGP 100 million.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, however, with the company revealing that it expects that figure to reach EGP 500 million, as it aims to reach over one million customers as a medium-term goal.

The launch of the new company feeds into Egypt’s push towards financial inclusion, as the local fintech ecosystem continues to flourish. While it can rightly be argued that the impact of the pandemic has played a large role in accelerating digital solutions across all sectors, the more pressing issue in this case is the fact that, according the World Bank's Global Findex Data report, only around 33% of adults in Egypt have an account with a formal financial institution. It’s a daunting mountain to scale, but Onsi Sawiris, OFH chairman, as well as Managing Partner at New York-based VC firm, HOF Capital, is confident of OFH team's track record in managing and developing both startups and well-established companies.

“With this strong partnership and ambitious vision of OFH, the new venture will introduce to the market cutting edge technology with a creative bundle of products and solutions that will facilitate cashless transactions for all payments and financial needs,” commented Aboulnaga, with CEO of EXCEL, Ahmed Sarhan, adding that, “the partnership aims to form a leading entity in the fintech field, to which Excel Systems will avail its broad expertise in technological solutions to ensure it can offer the best services and customer experience.”