Egyptian fintech Money Fellows takes digital esusu model to Morocco after $60M funding and profitability

Egyptian fintech Money Fellows has partnered with Morocco's Wafacash to digitize the country's daret savings circles, marking its first expansion beyond Egypt after a decade of building trust and unit economics. The April 2026 deal follows regulatory approval from Bank Al-Maghrib and brings Money Fellows' technology—honed through 8.5 million users and $1.5 billion in cumulative transactions—to a new market.

Founded in 2016 by Ahmed Wadi, Money Fellows digitizes gameya, Egypt's version of the rotating savings circles known as esusu or ajo in Nigeria. Ten people contribute monthly; one collects the pot each round. The twist: participants don't know each other. Money Fellows assumes default risk, covers missed payments, and uses alternative credit data—phone type, browsing behavior, location—to assess strangers. Early years brought regulatory grey zones, investor skepticism, and Wadi selling personal assets to survive. A $4M round in 2020, $31M Series B in 2022, and $13M in May 2025 (total >$60M) changed the trajectory. By October 2025, the company reported 350,000 monthly active users, two million completed groups, and profitability.

The breakthrough was measuring profit per savings circle, not per user. Early withdrawals generate fees; later slots pay incentives. Balancing that mix determines whether the model works. Wadi's retrospective: stronger banking partners earlier, more capital than seemed necessary, and faster experiments.

For Nigerian fintechs digitizing esusu/ajo, the lesson is clear: cultural familiarity lowers adoption barriers, but trust infrastructure and unit economics between strangers are the real product. Morocco tests whether Egypt's playbook travels.

If you're building or investing in informal finance digitization, what's your strategy for the trust gap when participants don't share a compound or church?

SOURCE: https://techcabal.com/2026/11/09/money-fellows-class-of-2016/