Contact Financial Holding announced the completion of a strategic investment in Wasla, an e-commerce super-app. With the tie-up, Contact will support Wasla's product rollout and regional expansion with a series of investments totalling up to $9m, aiming to realise Wasla's mission to enable e-commerce, payments, and credit for large audiences in emerging markets. Focused on optimising the end-to-end online shopping experience, Wasla is the first emerging markets mobile web browser and desktop extension that helps users save money, pay securely, build their credit profiles, and gain access to flexible and convenient financing. Currently, Wasla is focused on optimising the e-commerce search and discovery experience by helping users save money online by aggregating deals for a network of over 100 local and regional e-commerce merchants (Similar to US start-up Honey, which sold to PayPal in 2019 for $4bn). Wasla currently has 1.5m app downloads with 8.5x y-o-y growth in total e-commerce traffic and also recently secured a partnership to expand its services across Africa, the fastest growing consumer market in the world. Chairperson of Contact Financial Hazem Moussa commented: "We are thrilled to be supporting the Wasla team to build out their vision of a digital ecosystem enabling online shopping for all. With over twenty years of innovation in consumer financial services, this strategic investment demonstrates Contact's drive to multiply its reach and empower businesses with its advanced credit services platform." Said Zater, the Managing Director and CEO of Contact Financial, said: "This partnership comes as Contact continues to extend its credit services platform to serve digital channels. We look forward to supporting Wasla in its rollout of payments and financing tools, bringing the quality and superior customer experience that has come to be expected of Contact." "We will continue to seek new ways with which we can serve our expanding audience with high quality services through a wide variety of channels, continuing to transform the way consumers and businesses access financial services." "Having personally worked with the Contact team before, I was always amazed at what they have been able to build as a leading consumer finance platform in the region," said CEO of Wasla Mahmoud Al-Said. "This is why we believe this deep partnership — leveraging Contact's market position, experience, and fully digitised loan origination process — will allow us to expand our offering catering to the online shopping experience by introducing completely new ways to help consumers save money on each online purchase, pay securely, build their credit profiles, and borrow flexibly."
