MNT-Halan tests investor appetite with a possible IPO

Published: 2026-06-26T12:22:00.000Z

Egypt's biggest fintech is now seriously weighing the step that turns a private success story into a public one. MNT-Halan is exploring an IPO on the Egyptian Exchange that could value its domestic business at between $900 million and $1 billion, working with Citigroup and EFG Hermes.

Egypt's biggest fintech is now seriously weighing the step that turns a private success story into a public one. MNT-Halan is exploring an initial public offering on the Egyptian Exchange that could value its domestic business at between $900 million and $1 billion, according to reporting from Bloomberg and regional outlets. The company is said to be working with Citigroup and EFG Hermes on the potential transaction and has already held preliminary meetings with investors, with a listing possible as early as this year. A deal at the top of that range would rank among the largest fintech IPOs in Egypt's history and could elevate founder and chief executive Mounir Nakhla into the ranks of the country's newest billionaires. The structure of the proposed listing is the detail worth pausing on. The IPO would cover only MNT-Halan's Egyptian unit, while its operations in Turkey, the UAE and Pakistan would sit outside the listed entity. That carve out is telling, since the company has spent the past two years deliberately building a regional footprint, yet it is choosing to take only its home business public for now. The reported $900 million to $1 billion valuation for the Egyptian arm also sits below the group's most recent valuation of $1.4 billion, set just weeks earlier in a funding round led by Al Ahly Capital, the investment arm of the National Bank of Egypt. The gap simply reflects that the listing values one slice of the business rather than the whole. For anyone unfamiliar with it, MNT-Halan runs a super app that lends to and serves Egypt's vast underbanked population, the majority of whom lack access to formal credit through conventional banks. Founded by Nakhla in 2018, it offers unsecured consumer lending, buy now pay later, digital payments, savings, investments and e-commerce financing, all underpinned by proprietary credit scoring that assesses borrowers using behavioral and transactional data rather than traditional credit records most Egyptians do not have. The company has provided more than $15.5 billion in financing since launch and serves over 8 million customers, making it comfortably Egypt's largest fintech. A public listing would crystallize that scale into a market value. The timing fits a broader shift in Egyptian capital markets. Investor appetite has revived following the IMF backed reform program and the pound's 2024 devaluation, which improved the relative attractiveness of Egyptian listed assets for dollar denominated international investors. A successful MNT-Halan float would test whether that appetite extends to growth stage fintech companies whose profitability trajectories are still being established, a more demanding proposition than the industrial and banking names that have long dominated the exchange. It would follow Fawry, which listed in 2019, as a major homegrown fintech to go public. The regional read is about contrast and opportunity. Gulf IPO activity has cooled in recent months, which makes Egypt's more active equity market stand out, and a marquee fintech listing in Cairo could reinforce the country's position as one of the region's busier exchanges. For the wider MENA fintech scene, MNT-Halan testing public market demand offers an important signal about whether investors are ready to back digital lenders at scale.