This is Follow the Money, our weekly series that unpacks the earnings, business, and scaling strategies of African fintechs, financial institutions, companies, and governments. A new edition drops every Monday. When Fawry launched in 2008 as an e-payment switch connecting utility providers and telecom operators to consumers through retail agents, its pitch was simple: Egypt was a cash-heavy economy, and it wanted to digitise it.

That limited scope has since expanded into a sprawling financial ecosystem that now serves nearly half of Egypt’s population, powering daily utility payments, loans, insurance, and other financial services. Fawry is now Egypt’s largest mobile money platform, and its revenue has equally grown. In 2017, the company earned EGP 432 million (*$24.2 million) in revenue and netted EGP 53.7 million (*$3 million) in profit.

By 2025, its revenue has climbed to EGP 8.65 billion ($166.7 million), while net revenue reached EGP 3.1 billion ($59.7 million). After accounting for minority shareholders, Fawry’s take-home profit stood at EGP 2.89 billion ($55.7 million). Fawry now earns more than 20 times what it did in 2017.

Fawry: The $1.3B Money Engines The $1.3B Money Loop Mapping Fawry’s Financial Evolution Select Reporting Period 2017: Start 2025: Scale Total Operating Revenue EGP 8.65B 1,900% increase since 2017 Annual Net Profit EGP 3.1B The Five Money Engines Data Note: 2025 figures represent total year projections and reported segment earnings from Fawry’s latest financial disclosures. Marketplace capitalization as of April 20, 2026. Source: Fawry Filings TechCabal Tools As of Monday, the company’s market capitalisation stands at EGP 67.72 billion ($1.3 billion), nearly double from the previous year, and has increased by 1,029% since its 2019 listing on the Egyptian Exchange.

The company last crossed a $1 billion market valuation in 2020. Today, it is Egypt’s second-largest listed fintech by market capitalisation, after the state-owned e-finance. It now processes about six million transactions daily, controlling physical and digital rails where consumer payments happen.

Fawry has embedded itself deeply into the country’s informal market through acquisitions, unlocking new revenue streams to achieve scale and national relevance. Where it began: Transaction and collection fees To understand Fawry, it is necessary to consider the reality of Egypt’s payments economy in the late 2000s: cash, cheques, and large-value interbank transfers were the most common means of payment, with cash being the major instrument for individuals. Fawry’s initial strategy was not to eliminate cash, but to digitise its endpoint.

By placing point-of-sale (PoS) machines in local corner stores, pharmacies, and kiosks, the company created a toll bridge between consumers and their utility providers, telecom operators, and government services. Each time a customer pays a bill or tops up a mobile phone, Fawry takes a small cut. In 2017, this steady accumulation of micro-fees accounted for the bulk—about EGP 423.1 million (*$23.7 million)—of the total EGP 432 million (*$24.2 million) in operating revenue.

Over the next decade, Fawry aggressively expanded its network to over 300,000 service points, reaching 54.1 million users as of Q2 2025, the last reported customer count. Beyond growing the number of retail outlets, Fawry implemented a diversified, omnichannel expansion strategy. First, luck met timing.

In May 2020, the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) launched a campaign to deploy 100,000 PoS devices by December to ease access to financial services for citizens. The country’s State Information Service (SIS), its media and public relations agency, said that the CBE bore the cost of that deployment. As part of that initiative, Fawry scaled its deployment of PoS machines through partnerships with Egyptian banks, earning regulatory incentives for each device it installed.

In its 2020 results, the fintech earned EGP 55 million ($3.5 million) in incentives linked to that initiative. During the same period, it incurred EGP 35.4 million ($2.24 million) in costs to purchase and deploy those PoS devices, which were removed from its fixed assets, resulting in a net gain of EGP 21.4 million ($1.4 million), according to its consolidated report. In 2021, Fawry also earned EGP 21.7 million ($1.4 million) from similar CBE-linked PoS incentives, according to its consolidated report.

Second, it tapped into high-velocity transaction flows. Fawry embedded its electronic gateway technology within existing infrastructure, enabling transactions through bank automated teller machines (ATMs), mobile devices, e-banking platforms, and the Egyptian Post’s nationwide network. To complement this third-party reach, the company built its own physical footprint through its subsidiary, Fawry Plus, which operates dedicated branches providing electronic payment services directly to customers. By controlling these retail channels, a fractional fee Fawry translated