Cairo – Mubasher: MENA’s leading Buy-Now, Pay-Later (BNPL) lifestyle-enabling financial technology (FinTech) platform, valU, announced its investment in Hoods, the Middle East's first and leading live entertainment commerce platform.
valU’s investment aims to capitalise on Hoods’ unique platform to penetrate the fast-growing virtual shopping space and diversify its offering to both new and existing valU customers and merchants, according to a press release on Tuesday.
The investment in Hoods comes roughly two months after valU announced its acquisition of Paynas, as well as valU’s recent minority stake acquisition in Kiwe, the first youth social payment app that facilitates onboarding the unbanked segment in Egypt.
Hoods’ live shopping platform offers an innovative, unique, and user-friendly shopping experience and has proven to be successful in attracting a large and growing customer base. By building a digital application that has brought the vendor, content creator, and shopper, onto one platform to interact and execute retail transactions in a fun manner seamlessly.
valU’s Head of Strategy and Market Expansion, Habiba Naguib, said: “By tapping into this exciting space, we gain access to Hoods’ technology and community, which allows us to offer them convenient financing solutions as they shop online. Meanwhile, we are enabling valU’s expansive merchant network to be featured on Hoods’ live shopping platform, which will drive more demand and provide valU’s customers with access to a disruptive platform that will elevate their shopping experience.”
The transaction aligns with valU’s commitment to investing in companies that support its mission of elevating consumer lifestyles.
Hoods’ Co-Founder, Waleed Ghalwash, commented: “We have built a platform that uniquely fuses shopping and entertainment in a rich experience that offers both the convenience and the excitement of live entertainment through a robust e-commerce platform. We make sure that products are delivered to the customers’ doorstep with speed and with as little hassle as possible. This unique partnership with valU will allow us to provide a payment solution that hammers on affordability, which will further improve the shopping experiences of our consumers.”
