In an equity deal, Raseedi, a prominent fintech company that provides its daily fintech app to millions of underbanked Egyptians, has acquired Kashat, which in turn owns Pharos Microfinance S.A.E., a Kashat subsidiary, in order to expand its product line and offer instant loans.
The acquisition expands on Raseedi’s goal of using its distinctive daily stickiness approach to reach underbanked people without prior fintech experience or credit history. By giving the general public access to a dialer app that allows them to make cheaper calls, Raseedi users open the app at least 200 times a month, gradually introducing online bill payment and topup.
After passing the internal credit scoring process, users will now be able to access and apply for instant cash loans offered by Pharos Microfinance S.A.E. through the recent acquisition. These loans will be deposited straight into their mobile wallets. Raseedi has developed a novel daily behavior-based credit scoring algorithm over the last five years that can reliably produce customer credit scores and provide loans to underbanked individuals without any past credit history. It is important to note that the microfinance product, Nano Finance, is distinguished by the simplification of the documentation that the client must provide in order to receive the financing product.
With its 1-3 month instant short-term tenure loans, Pharos Microfinance S.A.E., a fintech company licensed by the FRA, offers the only nanoloans product available on the market with a maximum amount of 3,000 EGP. Pharos Microfinance S.A.E. assists nanobusinesses and sole proprietors in managing cash flow cycles and expanding their enterprises. With its unique product, Kashat gives millions of people in underserved areas the quick cash they need to expand and build small businesses.
Through a seamless onboarding and fully digital eKYC process, Raseedi will now enable small and solo business owners to apply for instant disbursed cash of up to 3,000 EGP provided by Kashat in less than five minutes using its proprietary technology and in-house credit scoring algorithm. Through cash loans with one, two, and three-month tenures, the special offering leverages short-cycle 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.”
In order to help the underbanked populations in Asia and Africa, Raseedi and Kashat intend to expand their fully digital solution there. following the cementation of its unique solution in Egypt. Using the simplicity of launching a fully digital solution with no on-ground operations, Raseedi intends to launch in multiple markets with ease after obtaining the necessary licenses and regulatory approvals from the Financial Regulatory Authority and other government agencies.
