Money Fellows turned Egypt's savings circles into a $60M-backed fintech

Money Fellows has raised more than $60 million in total funding and processed over $1.5 billion in cumulative transaction value by digitising an Egyptian savings habit that predates venture capital by centuries.

The company, founded by Ahmed Wadi, has moved more than two million savings groups and over one million registrations onto its platform since 2016. In October 2025, it reported around 350,000 monthly active users — and it says it is profitable.

The business rests on gameya, Egypt's version of a rotating savings and credit association. Ten people contribute the same amount monthly; one collects the full pot each month; after ten months, everyone has collected once. The person paid first has effectively borrowed. The person paid last has saved in instalments. East Africa runs a similar arrangement through chamas.

Why did expansion take a decade?

Wadi, who hit his own credit-history wall while living in Germany, started building Money Fellows with a close friend — their third startup together — while both kept their day jobs. He deliberately stayed in Egypt.

"We were very focused on really understanding and cracking the model on a local scale before we start distracting ourselves and launching other countries," he told TechCabal.

That patience came at a price. In the early years, Egypt had no dedicated rules for digital savings circles. Money Fellows had to build a regulatory framework with authorities while persuading customers to trust a platform without official backing. At points, the company struggled to fund operations. Wadi sold personal possessions; the company cut staff.

"You're building something with so much passion every day that you have the risk of being shut down at any point," he said. "No regulations, no benchmark, no success stories."

The funding eventually arrived: $4 million from Partech and Sawari Ventures in June 2020, when verified active users already exceeded 150,000; a $31 million Series B first close in October 2022 with CommerzVentures, Middle East Venture Partners and Arzan Venture Capital; and $13 million in May 2025, co-led by Al Mada Ventures and DPI Venture Capital through the Nclude Fund, pushing total investment past $60 million.

What does digitising strangers actually change?

The old system ran on social obligation. "People have always been used to do it with friends and family and aunts and uncles and neighbours," Wadi said. On his platform, "people don't necessarily need to know each other."

That shift transfers default risk from the group to the company. Money Fellows says it assesses participants' ability to pay and covers missed contributions so other members still receive payouts. Lacking access to conventional credit data, it built its own assessment system using signals like browsing behaviour, phone type and location.

Unit economics posed a second problem. Early-withdrawal slots carried fees; later slots carried incentives. Too many incentive slots, and the math turned negative.

"If you oversell the ones with incentives versus the fee, the economics change," Wadi said. The breakthrough was measuring profitability per circle, not per customer — deciding which circles to open, which slots to offer, and how fees could cover incentives, acquisition costs, payment processing and defaults.

Can the model travel?

In April 2026, Money Fellows partnered with Wafacash, a financial services subsidiary of Morocco's Attijariwafa Bank Group, to digitise the country's daret savings system, after approvals from Bank Al-Maghrib. Wafacash supplies local infrastructure and customers; Money Fellows brings the technology.

Wadi cites cultural similarity and a desire to diversify away from Egyptian currency devaluations. He also applied a lesson he wishes he'd learned earlier: banking partners' incentives matter from day one.

Asked what he would change, he said he would assemble stronger partners earlier, pay closer attention to banking relationships, and raise more money than he thought he needed.

"With the learnings, it could have been a lot shorter, a lot faster, perhaps," he said. Broader expansion could follow from the end of 2027 — once Morocco shows how much of the model actually travels.