Egypt’s Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA) has decided its non-banking financial market is full — at least, for the “traditional” players. The regulator announced on Wednesday it is extending its suspension on new licenses for traditional microfinance and consumer finance companies for another year.

But there’s a crucial, and very telling, exception: for companies leveraging financial technology, the door remains wide open.

The decision, formalised in Resolution №237 of 2025, extends a previous suspension from 2024. Officially, the FRA is concerned about “financial stability.” It cited a “significant increase” in existing licenses and the need to “verify the financial solvency of existing companies” before letting more in.

The move, the FRA insists, is also designed to “promote digital transformation.” And it seems the regulator has found its favourite way to promote it: by simply blocking the non-digital alternative.

In effect, the FRA is picking its winners. By barring new non-tech entrants, it’s building a regulatory moat around the country’s dominant, tech-driven lending platforms. These incumbents are now free to battle amongst themselves for Egypt’s massive consumer and microfinance market, which serves over 10.6 million people with a combined loan book of over EGP 112.9 billion ($2.4 billion).

The timing of the announcement is telling. It comes just as the champions of this new, tech-first model are demonstrating their formidable financial power.

Earlier this month, Egyptian fintech unicorn MNT-Halan, which serves as the country’s largest lender to the unbanked, announced it had secured another EGP 3.4 billion ($71.4 million). The securitized bond issuance was its seventh to date.

The latest $71.4 million bond is just one piece of a larger three-year, EGP 8 billion ($168 million) securitization program approved by the FRA. It’s the same strategy that funded MNT-Halan’s $1 billion-plus unicorn valuation in 2023, which was achieved through $200 million in equity and $140 million in debt from two other securitizations.

MNT-Halan’s buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) rival, valU, has built its entire growth strategy on the same model, raising a staggering EGP 12.3 billion ($246 million) through 15 separate securitization issuances since 2021.