Ashraf Sabry
The story
Ashraf Sabry spent about ten years at IBM Egypt and ten at Raya Holding before founding Fawry in 2008 to let bank customers pay bills electronically. He soon realised most Egyptians had no bank account, and that paying a bill often meant travelling to hand over cash. So Fawry put payment terminals in corner shops. That network was expensive to build, and it also needed billers to connect: Vodafone's sales team turned the idea down until the company's Egypt CEO gave Fawry a chance. About six months after Fawry's public launch, the 2011 revolution began. Its representatives kept signing up shops even as the streets became dangerous, and while rivals pulled back Fawry cut costs, tightened cash controls and kept expanding. Fawry listed on the Egyptian Exchange in 2019 and in 2020 became Egypt's first tech company worth more than $1 billion by market capitalisation.
By the numbers
Their company
EgyptFintechFawry
Egypt's largest electronic payments network for bills, cards and shop payments
