A big a part of the population of Egypt has no access to traditional banking business and forces many to depend on money transactions and informal loans. Khazna, a Fintech startup founded in 2019, is tailored to this problem by offering financial services which can be tailored to employees with low and medium-sized incomes. The company offers solutions corresponding to salary advances, digital payments and microloans, with which employees and contractors have access to urgently needed financial services.
Khazna recently secured $ 16 million in B-Financing of Vorwesers and increased its total financing to over $ 63 million. The investment will support your expansion plans since it is preparing to use for a digital bank license in Egypt and expand to Saudi Arabia.
When we covered FinTech in 2022, it had just collected a series A of 38 million US dollars with over 150,000 customers in its products. Today Khazna expanded its user base to over 500,000 people. This number is half of the until the top of 2022, as CEO Omar Saleh shared at the moment.
The company focuses on employees who earn 3 times lower than the minimum wage of Egypt and supply them with reasonably priced financial instruments. Around 100,000 users receive their salary billing via Khazna, in order that the corporate can integrate financial services corresponding to loans and insurance firms directly into its salary accounting accounts.
Khazna offers credit services for the remaining 400,000 users and helps GIG staff and pensioners to receive access to credit. Saleh explained that this product made the Fintech Break-Even last month.
“What we have done in the past two and a half years was to concentrate on our core product that spends credit and pension recipients and also unsecured loans to gig workers,” said Omar Saleh, co-founder and CEO of CEO, to Techcrunch. “This is the most profitable and central product on our trip, and it was very important to do it right because it helped us to achieve profitability.”
On the method to becoming a digital bank
Khazna offers other services corresponding to invoice payments, buy now, pay later, medical insurance and a product for rent. But by embedding each the salary statement and lending, it’s strategic to grow to be a completely -fledged digital bank for the under -sized communities of Egypt.
But one thing is missing: In contrast to traditional banks, Khazna has no access to customer deposits in order that it is pricey to finance loans. So far, Khazna has depend on debt financing in dollars (USD) and the Egyptian pound (EGP) to finance his credit transactions.
In order to scale back the credit costs and offer cheaper loans, Khazna is now working to receive a deposit license in Egypt. This license would enable the startup to just accept customer deposits in order that it may well reduce its middle costs.
“The biggest game changer here is that we have access to user deposits. There is a great opportunity for us to capture part of this market in a way that makes our financing costs much more attractive than today, and ultimately we would bring us a very differentiated position, ”he noted.
In mid -2026, Khazna is aimed toward securing the Egyptian Central Bank banking license, which set its regulatory framework for digital banks in July 2024.
When the six-year-old FinTech begins with this process, he can be targeting Saudi Arabia, where the demand for solutions for consumer financing is growing. In contrast to BNPL players corresponding to Tabby and Tamara, who give attention to short-term BNPL credit, Khazna hopes to differ with medium-term loan products corresponding to EWA (Earned Lohned Lohn Access), wage and salary billing credit and pension-based loan.
Expansion plans, including one not so within the compassion amount
Another reason why Khazna Saudi is prioritizing is his strong reference to Egypt, Saleh states. With almost three million Egyptians who live in Saudi Arabia, the Egyptian transfer corridor is one among the most important on the earth and offers the chance to supply cross-border financial services and mix credit-managed offers with foreign exchange rating solutions (FX).
According to Saleh, the capital markets of Saudi Arabia in response to the market size and the variation of Khazna are also a driver for the choice of Khazna. Tadawul, the stock exchange in Saudi Arabia, is one of the liquid and retail exchanges of the region and has been starting several IPOs lately.
For this reason, Khazna plans to have 40-50% of his business from Saudi Arabia over the following 4 years, which is justified for a public list of Tadawul. For early stage, Saleh offers a transparent path to a high -quality exit for early stage who supported the corporate for 4 to 5 years.
Sure, Khazna will finance this expansion with the recently increased growth capital. However, the macroeconomic challenges in Egypt up to now two years have had the structuring of this pre-series B round.
Between 2022 and 2023, Egypt stood with currency rankings and economic instability, which made the donations tougher for startups and activities. The general slowdown of the deal flows reflected this when investors pursued a cautious approach for Egyptian startups. In 2024, nevertheless, a big shift with over 50 billion US dollars in foreign direct investments (FDI) brought in Egypt after economic reforms and a more flexible exchange rate. As a result, trust within the investor returned and brought renewed interest from global and regional investors.
Therefore, Khazna welcomed the participation of recent and existing investors, including global investors corresponding to Quona and Speedinvest in addition to regional investment firms corresponding to Aljazira Capital (the Bank Aljazira of Saudi -Arabia), BEB SEED Fund (managed by ABS Capital), Disruptech, ICU Ventures , Khwarizmi Ventures and Sanad Fund for MSME.
