Wael Wahby: Transforming the Future of Fintech --[Reported by Umva mag]

Financial inclusion is a critical driver of economic empowerment and social mobility. In Egypt, fintech innovations are expanding access to financial services for underserved populations. Digital banking, mobile money transfers, and alternative lending platforms are reaching the unbanked and providing affordable solutions tailored to their needs.

For rural communities, fintech eliminates geographical barriers and brings services to their doorsteps via mobile phones. For women, fintech opens up entrepreneurial opportunities by enabling access to capital and money management tools. For youth, it instills financial literacy through user-friendly apps. In a nation where over 60% of adults lack access to formal banking services, digital finance is proving to be a game changer. At the forefront of Egypt’s fintech revolution, Fawry is on a mission to bank the unbanked.

Wael Wahby, Chief Marketing & Digital Officer, with over 2 decades of experience at top technology and telecom firms, brought a wealth of digital transformation expertise when he joined Fawry in 2020. His mandate was to evolve the company’s wildly popular myFawry mobile app into the Middle East’s leading “super-app” for financial services.

Prior to his involvement, Fawry had already reached incredible scale as an e-payment network, providing access to essential services like utilities and mobile top-ups even in rural areas. Wahby recognized the massive opportunity to build on that ubiquity and foundation of trust to meet Egyptians’ broader financial needs through one unified app experience.

Under his leadership, the enhanced myFawry app has transformed into a fintech powerhouse, allowing Egyptians to pay bills, transfer money, access micro-loans and other banking services, and much more through their mobile phones. Its user base has swelled to over 36 million, solidifying myFawry as the nation’s largest digital wallet.

Wahby’s engineering background underpins his datacentric, user-first approach to continuously raising the bar in terms of simplicity and inclusivity by relentlessly studying customer journeys and payment experiences to identify points of friction.

For the millions of unbanked Egyptians brought into the digital economy through myFawry, access to opportunity is nothing short of life-changing. Wahby is scripting a fintech empowerment story that is just beginning to unfold.

Below are the interview highlights:

Could you please give a brief introduction to Fawry and its inception story?

Fawry in brief:

Fawry stands as Egypt’s premier fintech, providing accessible and dependable digital financial services, and bridging the gap between banked and unbanked populations. In the realm of B2B, Fawry leads the charge with innovative, high-value digital payment solutions, empowering businesses across Egypt with efficiency and reliability in financial transactions.

Fawry Story:

Established in 2008, Fawry has evolved into Egypt’s leading provider of e-payments and digital finance solutions, offering accessible, reliable, and high-value solutions to millions of banked and unbanked users nationwide.

Over our 14 years of operation, we’ve expanded our offerings to cater to consumers, enterprises, SMEs, and financial institutions, with our alternative digital payments, agent banking services, financial services, supply chain solutions, and mobile wallets rapidly gaining popularity.

Since introducing 5,000 Points of Sale (POS) machines by 2010, Fawry has streamlined bill transactions with efficiency and speed across multiple channels. From traditional banking avenues to telecom wallets, Fawry Plus stores, the MyFawry app, and other third-party platforms, we have consistently led the charge in digital payment solutions.

Our adaptability and unwavering commitment to excellence have enabled us to overcome challenges stemming from the rapid growth of the digital payments sector. As a testament to our success, we now boast a customer base exceeding 52 million users and have expanded our POS machine network to encompass over 356,000 units.

To meet evolving user needs and expand our user base, we’ve diversified our offerings in B2B transactions, microfinancing, insurance brokerage, and Agent Banking services with launches like Fawry FMCG, Fawry Microfinance and Fawry Plus across a network of over 265 branches, prioritizing efficiency and convenience. As well as the myfawry app, which serves as a unified hub for bill payments, promotions, and various services. Additionally, the incorporation of the recently launched Prepaid Card, BNPL, and Money Market Fund services aims to transform Fawry into a comprehensive Digital Bank, providing users with an extensive array of financial services.

Aligned with the Egyptian government’s financial inclusion plan, Fawry expands its portfolio to cater to SMEs, with offerings like myfawry yellowcard, employee insurance packages, and HR solutions, expanding our lending capabilities beyond microfinance.

How would you approach developing a comprehensive marketing strategy to drive growth for your company?

First, understand your market position among consumers, businesses, and competitors. Identify your niche and differentiators, and define your core purpose. With this foundation, you can design your brand strategy, which serves as the cornerstone for all your marketing and commercial strategies.

With a clear end goal in mind where you want to excel and lead and an understanding of your current position, you can chart a path to growth. This path should be populated with products, services, campaigns, deals, events, and partnerships that guide you from start to finish. This constitutes your marketing calendar.

Each milestone along this journey must be assessed, evaluated, and refined as needed to ensure continuous growth and improvement.

What metrics do you believe are most important to track the success of marketing campaigns and initiatives?

There are several critical metrics that should be tracked in any marketing initiative:

• Customer Engagement: While immediate returns may not always be evident, an engaged customer is more likely to return for future interactions.
• Return on Investment (ROI): Every marketing campaign must generate a positive impact on the business. Campaigns focused solely on artistic recognition without measurable business returns are not advisable.
• Conversion Rate: This metric serves as your guide for optimizing the journey from visual engagement to customer acquisition, ensuring that every step is fine-tuned for effectiveness.
• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): This metric controls your budget to maximize results, ensuring that the cost of acquiring new customers is kept within sustainable limits.

How do you stay up-to-date with the latest marketing trends and technologies, and how would you apply them to your company?

I always strive to stay connected and wellinformed about the marketing events and campaigns of major global brands.

More importantly, I prioritize being attuned to my market, understanding their triggers, behaviors, and interactions with brands, whether related to technology or not. Aligning emotions and aspirations with current trends is a powerful formula for a successful campaign.

Can you share an example of a successful marketing campaign you led that effectively reached the target audience and achieved the desired results?

We recently launched a comprehensive campaign, featuring content tailored to each media outlet and linked to performance and convergence metrics, to promote our consumer financial services (pre-paid cards, consumer finance, transfers, and investment).

The campaign’s success is evident, with our numbers doubling as a result. We have built a platform around the card that can do anything and everything.

How do you approach building and managing a high-performing marketing team?

We operate as a unified team in an environment that fosters creativity and problem-solving skills. Through key steps, we pursue and achieve success:

Vision and Strategy: Establishing a clear and compelling vision and strategy.

Clear Objectives: Setting well-defined and measurable objectives.

Recruit & Retain Top Talent: Attracting and retaining the best talent.

Collaborative Environment: Promoting collaboration and encouraging new ideas.

Leveraging Data Analytics: Adopting a data-driven approach for decision-making.

Performance Review: Conducting regular performance reviews with targeted feedback and development plans.

What experience do you have in developing and executing integrated marketing campaigns across multiple channels?

Throughout my previous experience, I have consistently managed marketing campaigns across multiple channels.

I believe the key to success lies in understanding the unique audience of each channel and creating tailored content and metrics that effectively attract and engage that specific audience. One size does not fit all.

How would you collaborate with other departments, such as sales and product development, to ensure a cohesive and effective go-to-market strategy?

We have various forums in place for alignment and collaboration; however, I believe our culture, which thrives on direct communication, is the most effective for any organization. We encourage picking up the phone or emailing anyone and everyone to share ideas, seek alignment, and obtain approvals.

This approach not only speeds up processes but also fosters a collaborative environment across the organization. Additionally, it is much more engaging and enjoyable than traditional forum-based processes.

What is your approach to analyzing and interpreting data to make informed marketing decisions?

I will begin as I always do in any aspect of my business: start with the customer.

• Know Your Customers: Understand and segment your customers.
• Collect Data: Gather insights on their patterns, behaviors, triggers, changes, and profiles.
• Develop Ideas: Build strategies and ideas based on this understanding.
• Analyze Trends: Study global and local similarities.
• Test and Optimize: Conduct tests and optimize based on results.
• Launch and Evaluate: Implement your strategies and conduct thorough post-assessment evaluations. Proper post-assessment can distinguish a successful organization from a struggling one.

How do you measure the return on investment (ROI) for marketing initiatives, and how would you apply this to your company’s goals?

The more obvious method is to measure how much incremental business, revenue, or profit the campaign has generated compared to the marketing investment. However, this approach is more complex, particularly with awareness and brand-building/transformation campaigns, where results are less tangible than performance campaigns.

These campaigns can be more crucial than conventional sales or ROI-driven campaigns, and their effectiveness can be measured through ongoing research on brand health and equity.

The post Wael Wahby: Transforming the Future of Fintech appeared first on Insights Success.

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