Rabat - Casablanca-headquartered fintech company HPS featured this year on a list from Forbes of the best 30 fintech companies in 2023 in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
Founded in 1995 and ranked as the 17th best fintech company in the region, HPS is a card and payment technology company that provides payment solutions to card processors, financial institutions, and retailers, among others.
Its payment solution “PowerCARD” is in more than 450 institutions across 90 countries. HPS plans to expand to North America in 2023.
The company is listed on the Casablanca Stock Exchange. Its market capitalization stands at $435 million as of March 22 with revenues increasing by 20.8% in 2022 to $96 million, according to Forbes.
Morocco was overall underrepresented in the list with only one company appearing on the ranking. Egypt was the most represented country, with eight companies, making up 46% of the ranking.
Second on the list was Saudi Arabia with six companies, and the UAE and Kuwait with five each.
Payment companies dominate, with Egypt’s e-payment platform Fawry ranking first, having processed $6.8 billion in transactions and serving 49.4 million customers in 2022.
Jordan’s MadfooatCom ranks second, having served over 3.6 million active users and processed transactions of $14.7 billion in 2022.
As of July 2022, Morocco was home to 20 fintech startups. The country has a largely accommodative regulatory landscape for the creation of fintech startups, reports indicate.
Morocco has no unicorn startups - startups that have raised over $1 billion in funding before going public on a stock exchange. However, the country’s fintech landscape is ‘promising’ given the young demography, high literacy rates, and high-performing banking sector, experts note.
