Egypt’s fintech, Telda has raised $20 million in a seed funding round led by Global Founders Capital with participation from Sequoia Capital and former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s Block Inc.
The fintech startup said that it will use the fresh funds to drive its expansion plans into new markets and also develop its product offering.
Telda was founded in 2021 by Ahmed Sabbah and Youssef Sholqamy, Telda is a P2P payment app that serves unbanked users who can initiate bank transactions without any need for a bank account.
Youssef Sholqamy, Telda’s co-founder said, “In Egypt, dealing with money is still a complicated matter; making it easy and straightforward will have a large impact not just on the economy but also on the society as a whole.”
Commenting on the funding, Roel Janssen, a partner at lead investor Global Founders Capital, said, “We are incredibly excited to further strengthen our partnership with Telda. The company has launched a product that is better than most international consumer payments companies, and Ahmed and Youssef have attracted some of the brightest Egyptian talents in product, engineering and GTM. We are confident that Telda will continue to amaze Egyptian customers with an outstanding product experience and exceptional service in the coming years.”
The startup in collaboration with Mastercard in May launched its first kind of app in Egypt. In August, both companies launched co-branded prepaid cards in Egypt. It has onboarded 25,000 cards ever since and has a waiting list of 110,000 customers who have ordered their cards on the app.
In 2021, Telda raised $5 million in a pre-seed round led by Sequoia Capital, Berlin-based Global Founders Capital (GFC); and Class 5 Global.
