Egypt’s Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA) has licensed Cairo fintech Dayra to run digital microfinance activities, according to a regulator statement dated Thursday 12 November 2026. The FRA said it licensed “Dayra Microfinance” as a FinTech startup operating through Digified for Digital Identity Verification Solutions.
The statement does not give the date of the licence. It was one of ten approvals listed in the same release, which also covered insurers, asset managers, securities brokers and custodians. The release named one other fintech startup, Nice Deer Financial Solutions, licensed for factoring through VLens.
What Dayra does
Coverage of the licence describes Dayra as building embedded financial infrastructure for businesses, their customers and their workforces. WAYA and Arageek say it partners with B2B marketplaces, gig-worker platforms, logistics companies and payment gateways, and that its financing portfolio includes inventory financing, working capital, capital expenditure financing and earned-income access.
The company says it uses transaction and behavioural data from partner platforms to build alternative credit assessments for micro-businesses and individuals with limited access to bank credit. Hana Zaghloul, co-founder and chief operating officer, told WAYA that the licence gives the company “the regulatory foundation to significantly expand our partnerships and reach.”
A company claim, not a regulator finding
EgyptInnovate reproduced a company announcement on 14 November that identifies Dayra as the licensee. The announcement describes Dayra as “the first licensed provider in Egypt to offer microfinance services embedded directly within digital platforms.” That is the company’s own claim. The FRA statement does not make it, and this report has not checked it against the regulator’s register.
Earlier regulatory steps
The licence follows an earlier approval. Egyptian fintech outlet Fintech Gate reported on 20 July 2025 that the FRA’s fintech committee had approved the establishment of Dayra for Microfinance, to operate using financial technology. An FRA Sandbox list of authorised fintech startups includes a “DAYRA for Microfinance” entry dated 17 July 2025.
Funding history
The licence is not a funding round, and neither the FRA statement nor the company announcement disclosed a new financing amount. StartupList Africa records two earlier rounds: a $125,000 seed round with Y Combinator as lead, announced 23 March 2021, and a $3 million pre-seed round, announced 10 March 2021, led by Tanmiya Capital Ventures with Y Combinator, EFG EV Fintech and EFG Hermes. Ventureburn described the $3 million at the time as the largest debt and equity pre-seed round in the region.
Omar Ekram, Dayra’s co-founder and CEO, told Arageek: “This license allows us to scale a model we have been building for years.”
What remains unclear
The FRA statement does not say when the licence was granted or what limits apply beyond the activity named. This report could not retrieve the company’s website and did not check the FRA’s full licence register. The founding year also differs between sources, so this article does not state one.
Sources
- FRA Approves 10 Companies to Offer Non-Bank Financial Services Using Fintech (Financial Regulatory Authority, 12 Nov 2026)
- Dayra Secures FRA License for Digital Microfinance Activities in Egypt (EgyptInnovate, 14 Nov 2026)
- Dayra Secures FRA Digital Microfinance License to Expand Embedded Financing in Egypt (WAYA, 12 Nov 2026)
- Egypt's Dayra Wins FRA Digital Microfinance Licence to Scale Embedded Lending (Arageek, 12 Nov 2026)
- Fintech Gate: FRA approves establishment of Dayra for Microfinance (Arabic, 20 Jul 2025)
- List of Authorized Startups (FRA Sandbox, entry dated 17 Jul 2025)
- Egyptian fintech Dayra secures $3-million (Ventureburn, 11 Mar 2021)
