Fawry and PPOB: one machine, two countries
Egypt’s Fawry publishes what a dense payments network looks like at scale. Read against Indonesian PPOB: where payments stop being the product, why the network stopped growing while its value did not, and what a Gulf product team can take from it.
Figures are reported by Fawry (FY2025 release), in nominal Egyptian pounds, and not audited by me. Where I calculate, I say so.
The same machine
Egypt's Fawry and Indonesia's PPOB solve the same problem: let people pay bills and buy digital products through a dense network of small outlets, banks and apps. Fawry publishes its numbers, so we can see what that machine looks like at scale.
- 376.6K
POS terminals
- 36
member banks
- 54.8M
monthly users (estimate)
- 2,078M
transactions in 2025
- EGP 943.6bn
throughput value in 2025
- 4,530
services provided
Read the full section
I work on the Indonesian side, in the distributor tiers of PPOB. Fawry is the closest public mirror I know. It describes itself as Egypt's largest digital-only financial services platform, founded in 2008, serving the banked and the unbanked.
Its latest full-year release gives the shape: a network of 36 member banks, more than 377 thousand agents, more than 6 million transactions a day, and an estimated 54.8 million monthly users. In 2025 it processed 2,078 million transactions with a throughput value of EGP 943.6 billion, across 4,530 services.
Everything below is from that release, in nominal Egyptian pounds and reported by the company. Where I calculate something myself, I say so.
Payments are the way in, not the destination
Fawry calls its payments segment its oldest, and it is no longer the largest. In one year its share of revenue fell from 31% to 23%, while financial services went from 18% to 28%.
Share of revenue by segment
- Banking services
- Financial services
- Payments (ADP)
- Supply chain
- Technology and others
FY2024 shares are my arithmetic from the absolute figures in the release.
Read the full section
The release does not define that payments line, which it calls Alternative Digital Payments (ADP). I read it as the original payments business: bills, top-ups and similar products. That is my interpretation, not Fawry's definition.
The numbers around it are plain. ADP still grew 17.6% to EGP 2,008 million. But banking services grew 52% and financial services 135%, so the mix changed. The FY2024 shares are my calculation from the absolute figures in the release.
The pattern matters for anyone building in this sector. A payments network is a distribution asset. Once it exists, other products can ride on it.
The network stopped growing. The value did not.
Fawry's outlets barely grew in 2025: POS terminals rose 1.1%. Throughput rose 56.8%. The growth came from more value per outlet and from wallets, not from more outlets.
Growth, FY2025 versus FY2024
- Network size
- Activity and value
Revenue per transaction, my arithmetic: about EGP 4.2 (EGP 8,651.5M over 2,078M transactions), blended across all segments. Nominal pounds, so part of the growth is price level.
Read the full section
Total POS terminals went from 372.4 thousand to 376.6 thousand. Transactions rose 7.7%. Mobile wallet transactions rose 63.5% to 393 million, and the value they carried rose 71.8% to EGP 835 billion. The company itself notes the network was relatively stagnant while throughput increased, which it reads as higher efficiency per terminal.
Two cautions. These are nominal pounds, so part of the growth is a rising price level, not only more activity. And the release also records EGP 287 million of seasonal promotional revenue in the wallet business in the fourth quarter.
My arithmetic: Fawry earned about EGP 4.2 of revenue per transaction in 2025 (EGP 8,651.5 million over 2,078 million transactions), blended across all segments. It is a thin number multiplied by a very large one.
What sits on top of the network
On the same network Fawry has added lending, buy-now-pay-later, insurance, a prepaid card, investment funds, and it is rolling out phone-based card acceptance (Soft POS). That is where its growth is coming from.
Pick a layer to see what Fawry publishes about it.
- What it is
- Banks, agents, a mobile app and the users behind them.
- Public figures
- 36 member banks; 376.6K POS terminals; 54.8M monthly users (estimate); myFawry app downloads 24.2M.
- My reading
- The asset that every other layer rides on.
Read the full section
Each layer reuses what the network already has: reach, trust and data. Pick a layer below to see the public figures.
Where Indonesia's chain differs
From the outside, Fawry looks like one platform connecting banks, billers and agents. Indonesian PPOB is a chain of separate companies, and each one takes a small share. That changes who sees the numbers and who can build on top.
My reading, not Fawry’s words.
Read the full section
This part is my reading, not Fawry's words. Fawry does not publish how billers connect to it, so I only compare what is visible.
In Indonesia, a purchase travels through tiers: provider, switching, distributors, merchant. Each tier earns a small spread, and each keeps its own records. That is why reconciliation is a real craft, and why I wrote about the failed transaction.
It also means no single company publishes a figure for the whole market. I could not find a national PPOB statistic I would trust, so I do not quote one. A single listed hub like Fawry can show its throughput. A chain cannot.
What a Gulf product team can take from this
A dense network is hard to copy, and Fawry's own numbers show the value coming from using it more, not from making it bigger.
The mix is moving from payments to financial services. For any payments network, the question is what it can safely add next.
Every layer on top depends on the records underneath being right, which is what the notes on the PPOB chain and failed transactions are about.
Things I would want to test next: how much revenue one outlet really earns, how wallets and bank rails change who owns the customer, and how the bank-led rails in the Gulf, such as SADAD and SARIE, change the same picture. That last one is for another note.
Sources and notes
Public information, read as a payments person. Not financial advice. Figures are reported by the company, in nominal Egyptian pounds, and I have not audited them.
- Fawry for Banking Technology and Electronic Payments, FY2025 earnings release, 5 March 2026. All network, throughput, revenue and product figures come from it.
- My own arithmetic: the FY2024 revenue shares and revenue per transaction. Both use only figures printed in the release.
- Not found, and so not claimed: how billers connect to Fawry, and a national PPOB statistic for Indonesia.
- The Indonesian chain is described in the deep explainer.