Egyptian startup Qardy, a marketplace and aggregator for debt financing, is planning to boost financial inclusivity across the country after signing a partnership with the Egyptian Post Office.
Founded in July 2022, Qardy facilitates loans for MSMEs, with founder Abdel Aziz Abdel Nabi saying the startup’s goal was to be the “Amazon of lending”.
“Qardy aims to cut the waiting time to get a loan from nine months to around 18 days. Since the current lending process is manual, it takes so much time, and it mainly focuses on personal connections, making it very tough for MSMEs to go through the process,” he told Disrupt Africa.
“For financial institutions, there is a high customer acquisition cost for them, and there is limited access to MSMEs. In addition to that, MSMEs struggle to meet their requirements.”
Qardy is currently the only such lending marketplace in Egypt, and bases its model on being an intermediary between customers and financial institutions. Its partnership with Egypt Post will enable it to provide its services to MSMEs through a network over 4,300 post offices across the Egypt.
“Most banks right now cannot wait to onboard us as there is a huge need for our product in the market on both ends,” Nabi said. “Our partnership with the post office will offset our uptake even more, since this allows us to have access to MSMEs in rural and urban areas.”
The startup has secured funding from 500 Global, Sanabil Investments and a handful of angel investors, and plans to expand further across the MENA region soon.
