NowPay, a financial-wellness platform for employees in emerging markets, helps users achieve financial wellness by paying their salaries in advance. The platform also offers bill payment and money transaction services. Daily News Egypt sat down with CEO and Co-Founder of NowPay Mostafa Ashour to learn more about the company's services and strategy. What was the most important addition your app made to the non-banking financial services? NowPay is a cutting-edge fintech solution that helps employees achieve financial-wellness. Financial stress is a major cause for loss of productivity among employees. NowPay helps alleviate that by tackling the four main dimensions of financial wellness; saving, spending, budgeting, and borrowing. We aim to help employees save well, spend less, budget for their financial life and borrow seamlessly and effectively if/when needed. With the help of their companies, employees can get their monthly salaries in advance, pay all their bills quickly, send money to their colleagues safely online and shop hassle free. NowPay is the first company in the market to provide those services using a seamless technology experience that makes so much difference in employees' work and social lives. The application provides employees with their salaries in advance. How do you ensure that the money will return to your company? NowPay offers its services to employees through partnerships with their companies. As a result, our partners' HR departments deduct the requested amount by the user automatically from his/her payroll at the beginning of the month. What are the most important conditions for obtaining the service? Once we sign with a partner, all their employees are eligible for the service. Do the app users pay any administrative expenses or fees? We charge a nominal service fee based on usage. Have you encountered any difficulties on the part of partner companies? As employee wellness is gaining more and more significance in companies, NowPay's financial wellness solution fits perfectly with these efforts. Our solution helps significantly in improving employees' productivity by improving their financial wellbeing through allowing their employees to take control of their money, rather than have it control them! How many companies have you contracted with? What is your target during the next year? NowPay currently offers its services to 200+ multinational and local companies across different verticals like manufacturing, technology, real estate, retail, and NGOs. We currently manage over $500m in salaries. What other services does the application provide? NowPay also provides four other services. Users can cash in their money, use it to pay all their bills, transfer the money, or shop hassle free. Does the company deal with other categories than company employees? Our services are only available to the employees of our partner companies. Who are the most prominent clients of the company? We have managed to attract a lot of companies that care about the financial health of their employees including: F&B: Edita, Domty, Kraft Heinz, Americana, Gourmet, McDonald's, KFC, Baskin Robbins, and Beity. Tech: SWVL, Vezeeta, Wuzzuf, Trella, MaxAb, Capiter and KarmSolar. Real estate: SODIC, Coldwell Banker, Mountain View, Ora, and Wadi Degla Developments. Manufacturing: Elsewedy Electric Major brands: Raya, Axa Insurance, Zahran, Misr El Kheir, Mazaya If an employee was dismissed after he had already received his salary in advance from the app, who would pay the salary? The remaining amount is automatically deducted from the user's remaining financial dues at the company. Who are the main investors of NowPay? NowPay's success has attracted top local and international investors, including YCombinator. It is the seed investor behind multi-billion dollar companies like AirBnb, DropBox, Reddit, and others. It also signed partnerships with Bank Misr and the Export Development Bank.
