FinTech news in telda category

When Sabbah spoke with journalist last year, he said Telda had obtained a license from Egypt’s apex bank, the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) under its new regulations, allowing the company to issue cards and onboard customers digitally. According to sources who spoke to journalist, Telda was yet to go live in the Egyptian market after raising that much money because it ran into issues with the apex bank, among them the appropriate licensing it needed to be called a digital bank, which seemed to be Telda’s description at the time. Telda, an Egyptian consumer money app founded by ex-Swvl executive Ahmed Sabbah last April, has raised $20 million in seed funding. Telda eventually secured licence approval from the CBE a few weeks ago to launch as a consumer money and payment app in the Egyptian market.

Two years before Youcef Oudjidane co-founded Sudanese fintech Bloom after failing to find startups tackling currency depreciation in Africa to invest in, he was the managing partner and head of EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) at Class 5 Global, a San Francisco-based venture fund with a keen interest in emerging markets. The early-stage fund — which has made four investments: Ceviant, Apata, Thepeer and Anchor — consists of four venture partners, mainly founders that Oudjidane has backed: Ahmed Sabbah (Telda CEO), Prince Boampong (Dash CEO), Shekinah Adewumi (Apata CEO) and Kieran Gibbs, a professional soccer player. Oudjidane believes Africa is at the intersection of opportunity, that is, the next billion people to come online — and judging by its current portfolio of pre-seed stage startups, fintech is what intrigues his fund. Investing in startups building financial infrastructure is one of Byld Ventures’ principal themes, in addition to startups reversing Africa’s brain drain and repeat founders.