Fawry turned Egypt's bill-payment booths into the country's first $1B tech company

Fawry was founded in 2008 by Ashraf Sabry and Mohamed Okasha as a cash bill-payment kiosk network. In 2015 a Helios-led consortium took 85% at a $100 million valuation, and by 2018 the network was processing about $2 billion a year through 105,000+ service points across 300 cities — the physical rails of Egyptian everyday finance.

Digitization plus a landmark listing: online gateway, merchant POS acceptance, mobile wallets and later microfinance and BNPL. Fawry listed on the EGX main market on 8 August 2019 (FWRY.CA) at EGP 6.46, raising about $100 million (EGP 1.64B) with a 36% float — oversubscribed 30 times (private placement 16x) — and closed day one at EGP 8.48, up 31%, for a ~$366M market cap. It was Egypt's first IPO of 2019 and its largest fintech offering.

COVID turned the digitization into a compounding year: FY2020 revenue EGP 1,234.6M (+39.6%), net profit EGP 186.2M (+81%), throughput EGP 81.0B — and in August 2020 Fawry became the first Egyptian technology company to cross a $1 billion market cap. By FY2024 it had revenue of EGP 5,510.6M (+68.4%), net profit EGP 1,606.7M (+124.6%), throughput EGP 601.7B, 1,930 million transactions, 372k POS terminals and 53.1 million monthly customers, with a record 49.9% EBITDA margin.

30x-oversubscribed 2019 IPO; Egypt's first $1B tech company (2020); FY2024 revenue EGP 5.5B (+68%) with 53.1M monthly customers and 372k POS.

The moat was physical: 100,000+ corner-shop agents in a cash economy — digitization turned that distribution into a volume machine no pure-online rival could match.

Being the reference listing mattered: Egypt's first big fintech IPO created a benchmark, a brand and a market-defining moment — and COVID's push made 2020 the compounding year.

In cash-first economies, build the distribution network first and the platform second: the agency layer is the moat, the listing the milestone, and the tailwind the compounding event to be ready for.

Fawry kept compounding: FY2024 revenue EGP 5.5B (+68.4%) with net EGP 1.61B, throughput EGP 601.7B and 53.1M monthly customers. From a 2019 debut at ~$366M it crossed $1B in August 2020 — Egypt's first tech company there — and remains the country's payments standard, with EGP figures carrying inflation and devaluation effects.