Wasla’s product rollout and regional expansion will be facilitated by Contact through a series of investments totaling up to $9 million, with the aim of realizing Wasla’s mission of enabling e-commerce, payments, and credit for wide audiences in emerging economies. Contact, (formerly Sarwa Capital), Egypt’s largest consumer finance platform, has been changing people’s financial lives since 2001. Contact is the first financial services platform in Egypt to integrate innovative credit scoring and collection processes, allowing Contact to engage consumers from the start of their e-commerce journey while they explore, discover, and shop online. This investment reinforces Contacts quest to enable tech-first ventures in Egypt’s financing ecosystem. Focused on optimizing the end-to-end online shopping experience, Wasla is the first emerging markets mobile web browser and desktop extension that helps users save money, pay securely, build their credit profiles and gain access to flexible and convenient financing. Currently, Waslais focused on optimizing the e-commerce search and discovery experience, by helping users save money online through aggregating deals, for a network of over 100, local and regional, e-commerce merchants (similar to US startup Honey, which sold to PayPal in 2019 for $4 billion). Wasla was founded in 2019 by Mahmoud El Said, Serag Meneassy, and Taymour Sabry and now has 35 employees, 1.5 million app downloads, 8.5x year-over-year increase in total e-commerce traffic, and a partnership to expand its services around the globe. Africa is the world’s fastest-growing consumer market. Contact and Wasla will partner on realizing the objective of further increasing e-commerce adoption in emerging areas through various tools supported by a new suite of financial services solutions, including online payments and Buy Now Pay Later, as part of this strategic partnership. Operating as an extension to Contacts core business, Wasla will allow Contact to move into adjacent market segments and attract new user groups. Hazem Moussa, Chairman of Contact Financial, commented “We are thrilled to be supporting the Wasla team build out their vision of a digital ecosystem enabling online shopping for all. With over twenty years of innovation in consumer financial services, this strategic investment demonstrates Contact’s drive to multiply its reach and empower businesses with its advanced credit services platform.”Said Zater, Managing Director and Group CEO of Contact Financial, added “This partnership comes as Contact continues to extend its credit services platform to serve digital channels. We look forward to supporting Wasla in its rollout of payments and financing tools, bringing the quality and superior customer experience that has come to be expected of Contact. We will continue to seek new ways with which we can serve our expanding audience with high quality services through a wide variety of channels, continuing to transform the way consumers and businesses access financial services.” Mahmoud El Said, CEO of Wasla commented, “Having personally worked with the Contact team before, I was always amazed at what they have been able to build as a leading consumer finance platform in the region. This is why we believe this deep partnership, leveraging contacts market position, experience, and fully digitized loan origination process, will allow usto expand our offering catering to the online shopping experience by introducing completely newways to help consumers save money on each online purchase, pay securely, build their credit profiles, and borrow flexibly”
