Wasla, an Egyptian ecommerce startup, has raised $9 million from Contact Financial Holding, the country’s largest non-bank financial services provider.
Contact will invest up to $9 million in Wasla’s product rollout and regional expansion, with the goal of realizing the startup’s vision to enable e-commerce, payments, and credit for wide audiences in emerging economies.
Wasla is the first developing markets mobile web browser and desktop extension founded in 2019 by Mahmoud El Said, Serag Meneassy, and Taymour Sabry. It enables users to save money, pay securely, improve their credit profiles, and receive access to flexible and convenient financing.
Wasla is currently focusing on optimizing the e-commerce search and discovery experience for customers by aggregating deals from over 100 local and regional e-commerce businesses.
“Having previously worked with the Contact team, I was always astonished by what they have built as a premier consumer finance platform in the region,” said Mahmoud El-Said, CEO of Wasla. This is why we believe that by leveraging our contacts’ market position, experience, and fully digitized loan origination process, we will be able to expand our offering catering to the online shopping experience by introducing entirely new ways to assist consumers in saving money on each online purchase, paying securely, building their credit profiles, and borrowing flexibly.”
Contact and Wasla will collaborate to further enable e-commerce adoption in emerging regions through their different tools, which will be complemented by a new suite of financial services capabilities, including online payments and Buy Now Pay Later.
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