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MNT-Halan, the Cairo-based fintech platform, has reached a $1.4 billion valuation following the first closing of a new investment round led by Al Ahly Capital, the investment arm of the National Bank of Egypt.
The transaction completed after receiving all required regulatory approvals, with a second closing expected as part of the ongoing round. The size of the first close was not disclosed.
The company plans to allocate the majority of proceeds toward expanding in Egypt while supporting its broader regional strategy. MNT-Halan currently operates in Egypt and Türkiye, owns a specialised bank serving micro and small enterprises in Pakistan, and entered the UAE in 2024.
Founded in 2018 by Mounir Nakhla and Ahmed Mohsen, MNT-Halan offers consumer and business lending, payments, e-wallets, savings, investments and e-commerce services, all running on Neuron, its proprietary core banking software.
The company became Egypt's first fintech unicorn in February 2023, when a $400 million equity and debt package, anchored by Abu Dhabi's Chimera Investments taking a 20% stake for $200 million, pushed it past the $1 billion mark.
It has been an acquisitive few years since. A $157.5 million growth raise in July 2024, which included $40 million from the IFC alongside DPI, Lorax Capital Partners, Apis Partners, Lunate and GB Corp, funded the acquisition of Tam Finans, Turkey's market-leading invoice factoring firm with a loan book exceeding $300 million, from Actera Group and the EBRD, both of whom took shares in MNT-Halan as part of the deal.
That followed the acquisition of a microfinance bank in Pakistan earlier that year. Nakhla walked through the logic behind that acquisition machine, and the path toward becoming a fully-fledged digital bank, in an interview with FWDstart last year.
Al Ahly Capital is the private equity arm of Egypt's largest state-owned bank, and the deal makes it the first major commercial banking institution to take an equity stake in MNT-Halan. The firm said the transaction aligns with its strategy of investing in businesses contributing to financial inclusion and Egypt's digital transformation agenda.
The new valuation represents a 40% increase on the $1 billion mark set in February 2023, a period spanning repeated EGP devaluations and the company's expansion into three new markets. MNT-Halan declined to disclose its valuation at the time of the July 2024 raise, noting only that it remained above $1 billion.
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