When Jack Maru launched AccessPay in early 2021, he thought he had cracked the code for Egyptian fintech. His plan was simple: use small businesses as channels to reach consumers, building products that were “90% for the consumer and 10% for the business.” The businesses were just a gateway to Egypt’s massive unbanked population.
But sometimes the market has other plans.
Egypt presents unique challenges for fintech startups. With 50-60% of the population unbanked and half of all Egyptians still receiving salaries in cash, reaching consumers directly seemed impossible. SMEs, which represent 90% of private employment, appeared to be the perfect trojan horse strategy.
AccessPay’s digital banking platform was designed to solve this puzzle. The company spent 12-18 months building everything from scratch while waiting for regulatory approval, creating their own core banking system, processing engine, and compliance tools. With 60-65% of their team being engineers, they made a bold bet on building rather than buying existing solutions.
“We started by saying we do payroll and now we do payroll processing for businesses,” Maru explained on the Rally Cap Podcast. What seemed like a simple statement actually represented a fundamental strategic shift that would define the company’s future.
The pivot happened organically through customer discovery. As AccessPay’s team spoke with small businesses to understand how they could digitize payroll and reach employees, they uncovered something unexpected:
👉🏼 These businesses weren’t just intermediaries to consumers. They were massively underbanked themselves, struggling with payments, payroll, treasury management, and working capital.
“We realized that businesses in Egypt, SMEs specifically, have so many needs and are massively underbanked,” Maru said. The team began shifting focus from consumers to businesses, eventually flipping their product mix to 80% business-focused solutions.
The pivot proved prescient. After securing an $8 million seed round and receiving regulatory approval, AccessPay launched with a clear value proposition for businesses with distributed workforces, multiple locations, and high turnover rates. Companies like security firms, construction companies, and facility management businesses found immediate value in digitizing their cash-based payroll systems.
The timing couldn’t have been better. Egypt’s mobile money volume exploded from 9 billion in 2018 to 1.2 trillion annualized in 2023. Meanwhile, many competitors were either expanding prematurely to other markets or copying consumer-focused playbooks that didn’t address the real pain points.
AccessPay’s approach created an unexpected bonus: a “free consumer banking acquisition machine.” Employees who received salaries through AccessPay kept their wallets even after changing jobs, building a consumer base organically through business relationships.
The Egyptian fintech market still faces significant challenges. Regulatory complexity, limited cloud infrastructure, and the need for extensive customer education create barriers that don’t exist in more mature markets. But for AccessPay, these challenges became competitive advantages through deep market understanding and patient capital.
Maru’s experience illustrates a crucial lesson for entrepreneurs: sometimes the biggest opportunities hide in plain sight. By staying close to customers and remaining open to market feedback, AccessPay discovered that their channel strategy was actually their core business. The real opportunity wasn’t reaching consumers through businesses but serving the underbanked business market directly.
For startups navigating complex emerging markets, AccessPay’s story demonstrates that listening to customers often matters more than initial assumptions.