Money Fellows: Create Money Circles Online

Gam’eyat, Arabic word for Money circles, is a deeply established method within the Egyptian population for saving and rotating large sums of money, where a group of people form a circle and each person contributes a specific amount of money, all amounts are combined together, and members of the circle get the whole payout one by one.

Money Fellows is a web and mobile-based platform that enables its users to set up a money circle online, making it fully automated and a lot easier to manage, track, more transparent and above all, a lot more secure, as Ahmed Wadi, Money Fellows founder told EgyptInnovate in an interview.

The platform’s system places users in different categories according to a scoring system based on income pros and other data they source about the users or ask them directly, with limits on amounts and on payout turns. The higher the score is, the earlier the position and the payout that the user can choose.

Additionally, to guarantee safety and commitment, users have to get into a legally binding contract that imposes a promissory note with the amount they should pay, which could expose users to legal action if they don’t pay their share. The startup’s team pays in their place so that the circle doesn’t fall apart until they sort it out with these users, Wadi added.

Impact

The team spent their time validating the model, launching a couple of betas, and listening to their customers, which led to attracting over 5,000 users so far. Wadi believes that automating the process is the main impact.

“Finding a suitable Money Circle is always tough, usually people are forced to join a circle with a specific slot and payout time, and it’s geographically limited for people who live or work in the same place..., we’re solving this part by managing the whole process for their payments,” he says.

Challenges

As a fresh startup, Money Fellows’ founders had to go through a lot of challenges to get established and had to answer a lot of questions to gain the users’ trust.

“The funding, of course, was very tough to finalize, regulations in Egypt were very tough...it was hard to find the right banking partner and get the right approval for our service,” continued Wadi.

Questions concerning security, guarantees, whether their model is sharia-compliant or not, were the main questions that Money Fellows faced. “ They’re the normal questions early-stage startups go through which is whether people can trust this brand and so on, and of course apart from the technical questions on how to use the app,” Wadi said.

Funding and Achievements

Wadi explained that the idea started in Germany around three years ago, but the actual start was ever since they went to London in July 2016 where they were accelerated at startup bootcamp Fintech, the number one Fintech accelerator globally, then they were able to raise 600,000 dollars from a group of angel investors.

Besides, Money Fellows was able to acquire a lot of users in a very short time, when those who are interested in Money Fellows are done with questions, they quickly turn into signups. Wadi added.

Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

Finally, as a founder of a fast-growing startup, Wadi shared his thoughts and concluded his words by giving this advice to entrepreneurs, “persistence. Stay persistent, gather enough feedback, launch as early as possible to get the user feedback and work accordingly.”

Money Fellows is among the growing number of startups pursuing the financial technology field, which is expected to change and lead the world towards a fully electronic and automated financial system, putting an end to the era of all cash transactions.

Written by: Noura Shibl