E-Payment Platform Fawry, Strives for Financial Inclusion of Banked and Unbanked Egyptians

In 1988, Ashraf Sabry started working at IBM as a systems engineer and later was more involved in sales. Ten years later, he came onboard at Raya Corporation, an investment conglomerate focused on investments in various fields of IT, data center outsourcing, smart buildings, consumer electronics, F&B, and fintech to name a few. Sabry became pivotal in Raya’s growth, expansion and success across the Middle East, occupying various roles from business development, mergers & acquisitions, finance director, and finally COO and Chairman. He was also responsible for Raya’s IPO and as COO drove its revenue growth to 2 billion Egyptian Pounds (equivalent to US$107 million) in May 2005.

Around 2008, Sabry and two other colleagues at Raya began wondering how to create an efficient consumer payments product. They were