EFG Hermes' valU teams up with Amazon in Egypt for consumer financing

Company will allow customers split total cost of purchases into several payments

EFG Hermes serves frontier and emerging markets and its footprint spans 13 countries including Jordan, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, the UK, Bangladesh and Nigeria. Reuters

Egypt-based buy-now pay-later FinTech platform valU Consumer Finance has joined forces with e-commerce major Amazon to ease consumer financing, the company said on Thursday.

The partnership aims to offer consumer financing by valU as a payment method on amazon.eg.

Under the agreement, valU will make some of its consumer financing products available to eligible customers on amazon.eg, providing them with an option to split the total cost of purchases into several payments by using valU, the company said.

Established in 2017, valU is a fully owned subsidiary of Egypt’s EFG Hermes bank.

EFG Hermes and Amazon entered into an agreement whereby Amazon agreed to acquire “$10 million in EFG Hermes GDRs [global depositary receipts] with the option to replace that investment into valU at a future date, translating into a stake of more than 4.2 per cent of the issued share capital of valU, based on a current post-money valuation of valU of $235m”, EFG Hermes said in a statement.

Amazon, which operates a widespread local logistics and operations network across Egypt, has been operating in the country since 2017 through its company Souq.com. Last July, it launched a dedicated platform called amazon.eg in the Arab world’s most populous country.

The e-commerce company launched amazon.ae in the UAE in May 2019, after acquiring the home-grown Souq for $580m in 2017. It launched amazon.sa in Saudi Arabia in June 2020.

Currently, small and medium enterprises account for more than half of products on Amazon’s online stores globally.

With more than 3,500 points of sale, valU offers customisable financing plans and access to a wide network of retail and e-commerce providers across diverse sectors, including residential solar solutions, home appliances, electronics, education, travel and home furnishings, among others.

Its customers are able to receive instant credit decisions through their smartphones and gain access to the platform’s partners.

EFG Hermes serves frontier and emerging markets and its footprint spans 13 countries, including Jordan, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, the UK, Bangladesh and Nigeria.

With an operational history of more than three decades, EFG Hermes’ footprint spans 13 countries across four continents. In select markets it also offers leasing, consumer finance and microfinance services, its website says.