News

Hotel Cloud Kitchen Startup Matbakhi Launches In Saudi Arabia

The platform will help Saudi Arabian hotels tap into a $4.71 billion online food delivery market as the Kingdom pursues ambitions of becoming a Top 10 tourist destination.

Published

4 years ago

December 20, 2022

Nour Nasir

Matbakhi

Matbakhi, a food technology startup, has become the latest addition to Saudi Arabia’s booming catering sector after setting up a headquarters in Riyadh.

Matbakhi’s premise is simple yet innovative: The company helps hotels turn their unused kitchen spaces into revenue generators, upgrading their menus with fresh, creative offerings from young, up-and-coming local chefs. The idea is to give local talent a platform and help chefs build their brands, while simultaneously offering a delivery service to bring the meals to different neighborhoods.

“The way food is conceptualized, sourced, cooked, delivered, and consumed is evolving by the minute in line with the preferences of highly aware and increasingly knowledgeable consumers. Keeping these customers at the heart of everything we do, Matbakhi aims to make the food you want accessible and convenient to order, and ensure that it is delivered to your doorstep in minutes while you’re still looking forward to that taste and experience,” says Joe Frem, co-founder and CEO of Matbakhi.

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

Matbakhi’s cloud kitchens are effectively a plug-and-play service for hotels. The company offers everything from procurement to staff, helping to raise the profile of local chefs while enhancing the revenue and marketing reach of the hotels hosting the service.

The company’s novel business model will create unique opportunities within Saudi Arabia’s buoyant hospitality sector, especially as the Kingdom plans to become a Top 10 global tourist destination by 2030.

With help from Matbakhi, the hotel food and beverage sector could be transformed entirely, blending seamlessly into the online food delivery market, which, according to a report from Innovius Research, is predicted to be worth a staggering $8.8 billion in value by 2028.

News

Egypt’s Mobile Wallets Are Booming, But Cash Still Has Power

Egypt’s telecom regulator says $57.6 billion moved through more than 57 million wallets in six months. And one operator handled 77% of the value.

Published

4 days ago

September 12, 2026

Nour Nasir

egypt's mobile wallets are booming but cash still has power

Egypt’s mobile wallets handled EGP 2.96 trillion ($57.6 billion) in transactions in the first half of 2026, according to the National Telecom Regulatory Authority – a 56% rise on the EGP 1.90 trillion ($36.9 billion) recorded a year earlier. Transactions grew faster still, up 62% to 2.22 billion, while registered wallets climbed 23% to 57.01 million.

On one reading, that is exactly what Egypt’s regulators have been pushing for: a payments system that runs through telecom-linked wallets rather than banknotes. But the same data shows how far cash still reaches into it. Cash withdrawals made up just 12% of the transactions taking money out of wallets, yet 75% of the value withdrawn or spent.

Money arrives mostly from bank accounts: transfers through InstaPay accounted for 78% of deposit transactions and 58% of the value deposited, while incoming remittances from abroad made up 3% of deposit transactions but 10% of their value. Once inside, it largely moves between wallets – wallet-to-wallet transfers accounted for 54% of all transactions and 67% of total value, with mobile and internet top-ups a distant second at 25% of volume. In effect, the wallet is serving as a transfer layer: the place money passes through between the bank account and the banknote.

That layer also runs predominantly through one operator. Vodafone Cash held 53% of registered wallets and 57% of active ones, but handled 69% of transactions and 77% of their value. Its nearest rival, e& money, held 23% of registered wallets but 14% of transaction value; Orange Cash 20% and 8%; WE Pay 4% of wallets. How many of the 57.01 million are active is not stated.

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

Adoption is rather uneven in other respects. Men held 38 million wallets, or 67% of the total, against 19 million held by women. Users aged 26 to 45 accounted for half of all wallets, and Cairo alone had 10.6 million, or 19% of the national total, with Giza next at 6.5 million.

The NTRA says it is continuing to work with telecom operators on the regulatory framework for wallet services, part of a wider effort to expand electronic payments and financial inclusion. Its own figures show that effort succeeding on the way in. On the way out, three-quarters of the value still leaves as cash.