Egyptian Banks Company

Tarek Raouf, as Executive Chairman and CEO, leads the overall investment strategy. For the Nclude Fund, investment committee decisions involve representatives from the anchor bank shareholders — National Bank of Egypt, Banque Misr, and Banque du Caire — alongside the fund's management team. Ramy Aboulnaga, the CBE Deputy Governor, serves as Non-executive Chairman, ensuring alignment with the central bank's broader financial inclusion mandate.

EBC has a structural sourcing advantage through its operation of Egypt's national payment infrastructure. The firm can observe emerging fintechs that integrate into the Meeza card scheme or InstaPay instant payment rails, identifying high-velocity startups before they appear on external investors' radars. Its shareholder banks — the three largest in Egypt — also provide referral pipelines from their corporate and retail banking client bases.

Neither. EBC is a hybrid entity: it functions as a centralized technology and investment platform for the Egyptian state's banking sector. The Central Bank of Egypt is the founder and controlling stakeholder, with the country's three largest state banks as co-investors. Structurally, it resembles a sovereign strategic fund more than a family office or a typical corporate venture capital unit.

Nclude is a $150 million fintech-focused fund investing in Egyptian fintech startups from seed through Series B. The fund targets companies building payments infrastructure, consumer credit, earned-wage access, digital banking, and merchant acceptance tools. Its known portfolio includes Khazna, Lucky, and Paymob. Investment sizes range from roughly $500,000 at seed stage to over $10 million for growth rounds.

EBC's investment activity flows entirely through the Nclude Fund, which takes direct equity stakes in portfolio companies. It is not a fund-of-funds investor. All commitments are direct into Egyptian fintech startups, typically in syndicated rounds alongside regional and global venture capital firms.

The capital deployed through the Nclude Fund comes from EBC's shareholder banks: National Bank of Egypt, Banque Misr, and Banque du Caire, all state-controlled institutions. Mastercard is also an anchor investor. The broader EBC entity is funded by the Central Bank of Egypt and generates operational revenue from managing the national payment infrastructure.

EBC built and operates both systems under mandate from the Central Bank of Egypt. Meeza is Egypt's domestic card network and POS infrastructure, while InstaPay is the real-time payment application that has onboarded over 6.5 million users. These are operational assets, not equity investments — EBC earns fees for managing the infrastructure, and the transaction data from these systems informs its venture investing arm.