“We are building the financial identities. That’s our value and that is what we will offer to financial and non-financial institutions in the future,” says CEO
Cairo-based FinTech Cassbana raised $1 million in a seed round led by Egyptian FinTech-focused VC Disruptech as part of expansion plans.
Cassbana, founded early 2020 by former Careem Planning Director for Egypt Haitham Nassar, offers lending solutions as way of building financial identities for users who do not use conventional banking services.
It does this through artificial intelligence and other technologies to assign credit scores to users who use their lending solutions, by means of instant loans, behavioral data from the users, and machine learning, to build their financial identities.
In a statement, CEO Nasser stated, “We aim to establish financial identities for those dealing with institutions and service providers contracting with us, in order to enable these clients to obtain financial services, whether to grow their business or bypass any unaccounted risks. Without this financial identity, many suffer from uncomfortable and expensive options for obtaining financial services or no options at all”.
Cassbana’s first group of users were nano or micro-retail enterprises including grocery, cosmetics, or clothing stores.
The FinTech company would provide stores with inventory financing through its distributor partners, ensuring business owners would have needed inventory in-store. Business owners would receive these items without paying Cassbana’s partners at the time of transaction.
At the time of the transaction, Cassbana provides payment to their partners, which is later paid back by business owners through installments through their mobile app.
However, Nasser stresses that they are not a lending platform, “We are building the financial identities. That’s our value and that is what we will offer to financial and non-financial institutions in the future”.
Business owners are able to build up their in-app credit scores through on-time payments towards their loans, which increases their inventory financing limits to allow them to receive more stock in the future.
Officially launched in June 2020, Cassbana’s service began with only one distributor as its partner in Cairo, which has now expanded to twenty in various cities across Egypt.
Nasser told MENABytes that they also plan to launch lending solutions for customers of these retailers in the second quarter of 2021.
Cassbana’s official website states “Cassbana is a technology solution that builds financial identities for the underserved communities in Egypt through micro-lending and building a behavior-based scoring system; making us the future data-based financial advisory collective.”
