Amazon is investing in Africa, more specifically in Egypt, the American online retail group has acquired global certificates of deposit from the Egyptian financial group EFG Hermes, for a total value of $ 10 million. The agreement reached between the two parties provides that this investment could, in turn, be converted into a stake in ValU, a payment management company, subsidiary of the Egyptian bank.


For now, the financial details of the transaction have not been disclosed. But the equity investment in ValU is conditional on an IPO or other listing process. It’s not clear whether EFG Hermes is already planning to take its subsidiary public, but the Amazon deal comes in two contexts.

On the one hand, there is the fact that the subsidiary in Egypt of the Amazon group, has signed an agreement with ValU, to allow consumers who surf on its local platform, to be able to acquire goods and pay for them gradually. Also, EFG Hermes announced in February 2022 that it had hired an international investment bank to advise it on a bid by First Abu Dhabi Bank to take over 51% of its capital.

By acquiring convertible global certificates of deposit from the Egyptian bank, Amazon is giving itself opportunities to retain control over a local partner that provides contextually appropriate payment solutions. Amazon is not the first international group to enter the Egyptian fintech segment specialized in payment solutions. More recently, it is the international payment company Paypal that has announced itself as the leader in this kind of investment in the country.