Over the past few months, Egypt’s Financial Regulatory Authority has approved a string of licences covering microfinance, mortgages, fund distribution and private-markets investing. The approvals point to a broader shift among the country’s established fintechs. Companies that built their businesses around payments and lending are moving deeper into asset management, including the distribution of Egyptian real estate and investment funds to retail investors. The shift comes after three years of steep currency losses that have pushed Egyptians to look for alternatives to holding their savings in pounds.
Many have turned to property and dollars instead. Real estate has long been a popular hedge, but buying property requires substantial capital and ties up money in an illiquid asset. Dollar-denominated government debt offers another way to protect savings, although access to treasury bills and eurobonds has historically been difficult for retail investors. Fintech companies are now trying to lower those barriers, allowing customers to buy smaller stakes in these assets through their phones.
The regulatory changes have helped. FRA Decision №194 of 2025 allowed digital subscription platforms for private equity and venture capital funds, opening those products to retail and semi-institutional investors. Decision №3060 of 2023 and Resolution №125 of 2025 established rules for real estate investment funds, including the capital and governance requirements for fractional ownership. The rules were not written for any particular fintech, but they created a framework through which licensed platforms could distribute interests in property and investment funds digitally.
MNT-Halan, Egypt’s first unicorn, is among the first companies to take advantage of these new licensing regimes. Recently, it partnered with European asset manager Azimut to launch the Halan-Azimut Real Estate Investment Fund, allowing retail investors to buy units in a portfolio of residential and commercial properties through the MNT-Halan app. Investors can earn from rental income and any increase in the value of the underlying properties.
“The aim is to lower the barrier to real estate investment,” said Mounir Nakhla, MNT-Halan’s chief executive. The fund’s board includes Ahmed Abu El Saad of Azimut Egypt and developer Hassan Allam, bringing an established asset manager and property developer into the structure. Thndr, the Y Combinator-backed investment platform, has obtained a similar licence.
Nawy has taken a different route into the same market. The proptech marketplace originates mortgages for homebuyers and has begun packaging those loans for investors. In partnership with Synergy Capital, it recently closed a EGP 1bn ($20mn) mortgage-backed fund that buys portfolios of mortgages originated by Nawy, allowing the company to recycle the proceeds into new home loans.
“This fund proves how a proptech platform can directly shape financial innovation by bridging real estate with capital markets,” said Amr Malek, Nawy’s chief financial officer.
The two models generate revenue in different ways. Nawy is securitising loans and earning from the financing spread, while MNT-Halan is distributing a property fund and earning management and distribution fees. But both are using financial products to make real estate accessible without requiring customers to buy an entire property.
Menthum has applied the approach to fixed income. The digital savings app initially allowed customers to invest in a money-market fund holding treasury bills. In 2024, it added the Menthum US Dollar Fixed Income Fund with CI Capital Asset Management. The fund invests in dollar-denominated T-bills and Egyptian eurobonds and offers daily liquidity.
“This fund caters to those seeking attractive returns, diversification, and easy access, while also offering liquidity for managing foreign currency holdings,” said Dr Amr Aboul Enein, CI Capital’s chief executive.
This week, Menthum announced that it had received FRA approval to process subscriptions and redemptions, formalising its role in distributing investment products.
The expansion is also reaching beyond investment products. Telda, which launched in 2021 as a peer-to-peer wallet, has spent the past two years adding financial-services licences, including brokerage and custody, and this week too, it received a consumer finance licence despite a recent scandal in the sector. The combination allows the company to move further into investment and financial services beyond payments.
“This is part of our broader ambition to become a comprehensive destination for all non-bank financial services using tech,” said Hisham Ibrahim, Telda Holding’s managing director.
MNZL is approaching the market from the lending side. The company raised $3.5mn in 2024 to build a digital asset-backed lending platform that allows Egyptians to borrow against homes and cars. Its latest FRA licence allows it to offer consumer and real estate financing through digital and fintech solutions.
The regulatory environment is also shaping which parts of the fintech market can expand. While the FRA has opened more room for digital investment and asset-backed products, it has frozen new consumer finance licences to curb lending growth. Telda, MNZL and others were able to proceed because its application was submitted before the moratorium.
FRA data shows that EGP 87.2bn ($1.8bn) was disbursed to 10.7 million consumer finance customers in the first 11 months of 2025. Electronics, vehicles and household appliances accounted for much of the lending, while reported defaults remained at between 3% and 4%.
For fintech companies, the distinction matters. Asset-backed products give customers exposure to property, government debt or other investments without requiring them to buy the underlying asset outright. Unsecured consumer lending, by contrast, leaves lenders carrying more direct credit risk. The regulator has been more willing to expand the former while putting limits on the latter.
There are still risks in building businesses around financial assets. Capiter, co-founded by a former colleague of Telda’s founders, raised more than $30mn before collapsing within a year amid governance and liquidity problems. Its failure showed that raising capital and obtaining licences do not remove the operational risks involved in managing financial products and customer money.
Investors continue to back the broader shift. Thndr, which accounted for 82% of new investor registrations on the Egyptian Exchange in 2024, raised a $15.7mn Series A extension in May 2025 led by Prosus Ventures, bringing its total funding to nearly $38mn. The company said it planned to expand into the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
“Thndr is transforming access to investing across MENA,” said Sandeep Bakshi, Prosus’s head of investments for Europe.
The direction of travel is becoming clearer. Egypt’s fintechs are moving beyond payments and unsecured lending into businesses built around distributing, financing and managing assets. The attraction is partly commercial, but the regulatory changes are making the shift easier to pursue at a time when Egyptian savers are looking for alternatives to the pound.
