• Egypt-based fintech Raseedi has acquired Kashat, which in its role owns Pharos Microfinance S.A.E., a subsidiary of Kashat, in an equity deal to broaden its product offerings and introduce instant loans.
• Founded in 2018 by Ahmed Atalla and Samuel Samy, Raseedi offers underbanked users a dialler to make cheaper calls, receive saving tips, make payments and borrow Airtime and bills instantly without a credit history.
• Kashat, founded in Egypt in 2018 by Karim Nour and Sumair Farooqui, is a fintech that instantly lends small loans to the financially excluded.
• After the acquisition, Raseedi and Kashat plan to replicate their fully digital solution across Africa and Asia to serve underbanked masses in these regions.

Press release:

Raseedi, a leading fintech player serving Egypt’s millions of underbanked masses through its daily fintech app, has acquired Kashat, which in its role owns Pharos Microfinance S.A.E., a subsidiary of Kashat, in an equity deal to broaden its product offerings and introduce instant loans.

The acquisition builds on Raseedi’s mission to introduce underbanked masses who have no previous fintech experience or credit history through its unique daily stickiness approach. By providing the masses with a dialler app to make cheaper calls, Raseedi users open the app at least 200 times per month to make calls and slowly introduce them to online topup and bill payments.

Now with the new acquisition, users will be able to access and apply for instant cash loans provided by Pharos Microfinance S.A.E. that are directly deposited into their mobile wallets (after passing the internal credit scoring process). Over the past 5 years, Raseedi has built a unique daily behaviour-based credit scoring algorithm that can accurately generate customer credit scores and disburse loans to underbanked masses with no prior credit history. It is worth mentioning that the microfinance product (Nano Finance) is characterised by simplifying the documentation required from the client to obtain the financing product.

Pharos Microfinance S.A.E. is an FRA-licensed fintech player in the nanolending industry, offering the only nanoloans product in the market of up to 3,000 EGP through its 1-3-month instant short-term tenure loans. Pharos Microfinance S.A.E. helps solo business owners and nanobusinesses develop and grow their businesses and manage through cash flow cycles. Through its one-of-a-kind offering, Kashat provides an underserved segment of millions with the needed instant cash to grow and develop small industries.

Raseedi will now use its proprietary technology and homegrown credit scoring algorithm to provide small and solo business owners with means to apply for instant disbursed cash of up to 3,000 EGP provided by Kashat in less than 5 minutes through a smooth onboarding and completely digital eKYC process. The unique offering leverages short-cycle loans through 1 month, 2 month, and 3 month tenure cash loans.

Ahmed Atalla, CEO of Raseedi, said: “Ever since we began our journey to serve underbanked masses, our dream has been to provide a fully rounded fintech solution of payments and lending to millions of underserved masses. We have built a strong credit scoring algorithm over the past years from billions of data points and daily behaviour analysis of over 1 million Raseedi app users. After growing our payments product to double-digit throughput growth per annum, now is the time to offer the market a new and unprecedented lending product. Imagine applying, going through a fully digital eKYC, and receiving your cash loan in your wallet within seconds. With this great milestone, we can say those who have never been given a credit score can now be part of Egypt’s financial inclusion movement that has been on the top of the Egyptian government’s agenda. We look forward to working with the Kashat team and the FRA on this breakthrough product and offering.”

Karim Nour, co-founder and CEO of Kashat, said: “This deal unifies efforts to further scale financial inclusion in Egypt and beyond. The ability to easily lend money to the masses will be expanded, and Raseedi, along with Kashat, through its subsidiary Pharos Microfinance S.A.E., will become Egypt’s only financial service provider to offer nanoloans at scale, and that was purposefully built for the task. This deal is important because the companies involved are true big data and artificial intelligence players and are both home-grown. It is refreshing that this will create a true centre of excellence in both the delivery of innovative financial services and AI. We are excited at what Raseedi and Kashat can and will do in the future, at home and across the region.”

Forward-looking, Raseedi and Kashat plan to replicate their fully digital solution across Africa and Asia to serve underbanked masses in these regions. After cementing its unique solution in Egypt. Raseedi plans to seamlessly launch in several markets, utilising the ease of launching a fully digital solution with zero on-ground operation after securing relevant licenses and regulatory approvals from the Financial Regulatory Authority and other government entities.