News

Egypt’s Tech Startup OneOrder Raises $3M In Funding

Investors have now injected a total of $10.5 million into the Egypt-based catering logistics firm.

Published

4 years ago

December 6, 2022

Nour Nasir

OneOrder

OneOrder, the Egyptian catering logistics and technology startup, has just raised another $3 million after a recent round of funding, with a view to boosting the firm’s core technology offering and upgrading in-house operations.

The latest funding round was led by Nclude, an investment platform that describes itself as an “Innovation Engine powered by tech startups”, as well as venture capital firm A15, and delivery giant Delivery Hero.

The fresh capital injection will help boost OneOrder’s in-house operations, improve sales and market share, and allow the firm to recruit top talent and improve its proprietary technology. In addition, OneOrder will now be able to scale its offline operations, expanding its network of warehouses further across Egypt and the MENA region.

“Aside from improving efficiency, we are reducing costs and impacting restaurants’ bottom lines. Joined by prominent global investors with deep knowledge and extensive expertise in our sector, we look forward to our next phase of rapid growth,” says Tamer Amer, co-founder and chief executive of OneOrder.

Also Read: Hub71’s Startup Ecosystem Now Boasts Over 200 Members

OneOrder has only been in existence since October 2021 and has already made a name for itself by using technology to address the inefficiencies faced by restaurants when sourcing supplies. The company’s platform allows restaurants to interact with a fragmented supplier base to efficiently source their supplies, such as meat, vegetables and catering equipment.

In Egypt, OneOrder has a potential market of 400,000 restaurants with an aggregate annual spend of $40 billion. Due to non-integrated supply chains, these businesses spend between 6-7% of their revenue to ensure logistical stability, so the future certainly looks interesting for this prominent startup.

News

Visa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon

Foreign visitors will be the first users to benefit, but whether Syria’s own banks and cardholders follow is still an open question.

Published

2 weeks ago

August 27, 2026

Dana Saadeh

visa's return to syria starts with a test and a bank in lebanon

Visa is returning to Syria. Its first live international card transaction in the country was a test rather than a launch, and the milestone event ran through a Lebanese bank.

The acquirer (the bank on the merchant’s side of a card payment) was Fransabank Lebanon, with Paymera as the other named partner. Nadim Moujaes, who heads a Fransabank Group subsidiary, describes the test as both the culmination of “longstanding efforts to link Syria back to international payment networks” and “the first step in a larger path”.

Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa makes the first electronic payment in Syria using a @Visa card at a store in Damascus, following the lifting of US sanctions on Syria. pic.twitter.com/lpAN7nQ6Fc

— Tech Magazine (@TechMGZN) August 27, 2026

“We are excited to have successfully tested live transactions today as we plan to enable international visitors to use their Visa cards while in Syria,” says Leila Serhan, Visa’s senior vice president and group country manager for the North Africa, Levant and Pakistan region. Although a significant first step, that plan doesn’t come with a hard date for when a visitor’s card will work normally.

Mohammed Safwat Raslan, governor of the Central Bank of Syria, says the test paves the way for international card acceptance in Syria and that maintaining strong compliance, risk management and operational controls will remain essential. Serhan likewise stresses that Visa has worked within applicable legal, regulatory and compliance requirements. For a test transaction, it seems there was a great deal of attention paid to the rules, with the entire operation being carefully managed.

Also Read: Lebanon’s 5G Era Begins With 150 Stations And A $1M Budget

The test is the latest step in a sequence that began in December 2025, when Visa announced a strategic roadmap to support Syria’s integration into the global digital economy. In February 2026 it hosted its first industry gathering of banks, ecosystem partners and policymakers in Damascus and, the same month, signed an agreement with Syria’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in San Francisco.

Michel Kattouah, Paymera’s CEO, called the test “the return of international card acceptance,” but while that’s positive news, there’s no word yet on when a Syrian bank will issue a Visa card to a Syrian customer.