Cairo-based financial technology (fintech) startup Cassbana, has raised a six-figure pre-seed funding round led by Egypt’s fintech-focused fund Disruptech, with participation from other fintech funds and angel investors.

Founded in early 2020, Cassbana offers financial identities for the underserved and unbanked in Egypt. It uses technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to help financial institutions and companies create innovative lending and financial support solutions based on customer data collected through the application. 

“Our goal is to create financial identities for the underserved and unbanked who cannot receive financing options from their suppliers and service providers to scale their small shadow businesses or to pass through a difficult time in their business journey. Instead of them being assumed to be a high default risk, our financial identities offer them a chance to receive different financing options with a low risk of default,” said Haitham Nassar, founder and CEO of Cassbana.

“The Egyptian micro-enterprise market is more than huge, we aim to create one million financial identities before the end of 2021,” he added.

Cassbana now counts over 20 service providers in Cairo as well as other cities, with plans to expand to upper Egypt this month.

“The Egyptian fintech ecosystem is one of the biggest worldwide, our role as a fund is to support fintech companies from the beginning all the way through local and international IPOs,” said Mohamed Okasha, founder of Disruptech. “We have seen Cassbana’s team work ethic first-hand and their growth over the past six months has been massive. Disruptech admires their strategic vision both locally and internationally and this is why we chose to lead the company’s first investment round.”