Khazna buys Pharos Consumer Finance and gets full FRA license

Khazna has acquired Pharos Consumer Finance and secured a full consumer finance license from Egypt’s Financial Regulatory Authority. The Cairo fintech bought the licensed lender from Pharos Holding. The price was not disclosed. The deal was completed earlier in 2026 and announced this week. Egypt has frozen new fintech lending licenses, so buying a licensed company is now the main route into the market. Pharos Consumer Finance was licensed by the FRA in September 2022. It holds an established consumer finance permit. By acquiring the company, Khazna Capital gains the license and a regulated platform through which it can deploy credit lines from financial institutions. The company has already begun doing so. Until the acquisition, Khazna lent through FRA-regulated partner entities rather than under its own consumer finance license. Khazna is a Cairo-based fintech focused on payroll and pension-backed lending for underserved consumers. It claims more than 500,000 users, about 100,000 of whom receive payroll through the platform. The company uses a B2B2C partnership model. It has been pursuing a separate digital-bank license from the Central Bank of Egypt, targeted for mid-2026. The Pharos acquisition gives it direct consumer finance capacity while that process continues. The timing reflects a structural change in Egypt’s non-bank financial sector. In February 2026 the FRA issued Resolution No. 43 of 2026, suspending for one year the acceptance of applications to establish and license companies conducting consumer finance activities using fintech. Existing regulated entities became scarce assets. Several acquisitions have followed. Khazna’s purchase of Pharos is one of them. For a borrower the practical change is that Khazna can now originate consumer finance under its own FRA license rather than only through partners. The company says the license strengthens its ability to offer responsible financial services to Egyptians underserved by traditional banking. It does not publish the size of the credit lines it has begun deploying or the number of loans originated under the new structure. A further limit is the price and the integration. The acquisition price is not disclosed. The announcement does not state whether Pharos staff, systems or existing loan book transfer with the license. Those details determine how quickly Khazna can scale direct lending. Other Egyptian fintechs have also turned to acquisitions or earlier applications to navigate the license freeze. Souhoola, for example, received FRA approval for digital consumer lending because its application was filed before the freeze. Khazna’s route was acquisition. The two paths sit in the same regulatory environment. The company has stated that the license supports its long-term vision to expand in the Egyptian consumer finance market using its partnership-led model. It has begun deploying credit lines. The volume and terms of those lines are not disclosed. A reader can see the license change. A reader cannot yet see the lending volume that follows it. Zaki Hashem, Attorneys at Law, served as legal counsel for the transaction. The announcement does not list other advisors or the exact closing date beyond “earlier this year”. Saudi and UAE fintechs have also expanded into Egypt through partnerships or licenses. Khazna’s acquisition is a local route that uses an existing Egyptian license rather than applying for a new one during the freeze. The comparison is between waiting for the freeze to lift and buying an already licensed entity. The B2B2C model relies on partnerships with companies and entities that can distribute the product and on salary or pension data for risk assessment. The license does not change that model. It changes the regulatory entity under which the lending occurs. Direct origination under the FRA license is now possible. The scale of that origination is not yet published. Pharos Holding previously owned the consumer finance subsidiary. The sale removes that entity from the holding company’s portfolio. Khazna now owns the licensed vehicle. The announcement does not state the remaining activities of Pharos Holding after the sale. If Khazna publishes the volume of loans originated under the Pharos license and the terms of the credit lines it has secured, the acquisition has an operational follow-through. If the next update is only a further partnership or product announcement, the license remains a regulatory asset rather than a measured lending book. The figure missing is the originated volume.