MNT-Halan Eyes Egypt Exchange Debut with Ambitious 20% Share Listing

Egypt’s MNT-Halan is getting ready for a public market debut, with plans to float 20% of its shares on the Egyptian Exchange in what could become one of the more closely watched fintech listings in the country this month. The company intends to list 320 million ordinary shares, giving investors a route into a business that has built a sizeable lending and payments operation in Egypt.

The offer is set to include both a private placement for institutional investors and a public offering inside Egypt. On top of that, about 24.3 million shares are expected to be sold to senior employees, subject to regulatory approval. The transaction is also still tied to market conditions and the usual approvals, so there is still a bit of a wait before everything is spot on.

Founded in 2018, MNT-Halan became known as Egypt’s first fintech unicorn and has grown around a broad financial services model. Through the Halan app and its physical network across the country, it offers business and consumer loans, prepaid cards, e-wallets, investment products and e-commerce services. That mix matters. In this part of the world, startups that can bridge digital access with an on-the-ground presence often have a better shot at reaching customers who are still underserved by traditional finance.

For Egypt’s capital markets, the listing lands at an interesting moment. There has been a wider push to bring in more investor participation, and large private-sector offerings are being watched carefully as a sign of confidence in the market. I’ve seen, time and again while following MENA startups for readers at Arageek, that founders often dream about this step for years, then discover the public-markets route is not exactly a walk in the park. Still, when a homegrown fintech reaches this stage, it says something important about how far the ecosystem has come.

The move also follows other recent activity on the exchange, including the December 2024 listing of United Bank, when Egypt’s central bank sold a 30% stake in the state-owned lender. That deal offered one measure of investor appetite. MNT-Halan’s float will provide another, though this time the focus is on a private fintech business with regional ambitions.

Mounir Nakhla, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement reported by Reuters that progress in Egypt’s economy and capital markets over the past two years has made the market more attractive to foreign investors. That sounds fair enough. On the flip side, investors will likely look beyond the headline unicorn tag and dig into customer growth, lending activity and how the company manages expansion across emerging markets.

And believe it or not, that is where the story gets more interesting than the usual IPO fanfare. MNT-Halan is not just selling shares; it is testing whether Egypt’s market is ready to back a fintech at scale in public view. I reckon that matters well beyond one company, because if the listing goes smoothly, it could give other startups in the region a clearer roadmap — and maybe a little courage too. The next few weeks should tell us more, even if markets are never neat and investors can be a touch pesy.

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