eNovate, a subsidiary of eFinance Investment Group, has announced an integration with Cobi, an AI-native customer intelligence platform headquartered in the UAE, in a move set to reshape how young Egyptians interact with digital financial services.
Enabled through Mastercard Engage programme, the partnership embeds Cobi’s AI-powered intelligence infrastructure across eNovate’s digital payments ecosystem.
The goal is to equip banks, fintechs and payment providers with deeper behavioural insight, real-time personalisation capabilities and portfolio-level intelligence at scale.
The collaboration signals a broader shift in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) financial services landscape, from rapid digital payments adoption to AI-driven engagement and predictive infrastructure.
Rize App to Anchor Youth-Focused Rollout
The first phase of deployment will take place within Rize, eNovate’s flagship digital wallet targeting Egypt’s youth demographic. By integrating Cobi’s behavioural AI engine into the app, the companies aim to enable real-time contextual engagement, tailoring financial experiences based on how users transact, save and spend.
With approximately 85 per cent of consumers across MENA now using at least one emerging digital payment method, the opportunity has shifted from access to optimisation. Financial institutions are increasingly seeking tools that go beyond transaction processing to understand behavioural friction points, spending patterns and lifecycle triggers.
Through the integration, banks and fintech platforms using eNovate’s infrastructure will be able to:
- Identify drop-off points in activation journeys
- Detect behavioural signals that indicate churn risk
- Trigger “next-best actions” across acquisition, engagement and retention
- Optimise product recommendations based on contextual usage patterns
The capability is expected to extend across eNovate’s broader suite of digital payment services, forming what the company describes as Egypt’s first large-scale AI-driven digital payments portfolio management infrastructure.
AI in Financial Services
The timing of the partnership reflects accelerating investment in intelligent fintech infrastructure. The AI in financial services market across MENA is projected to reach $4.7 billion by 2032, underscoring growing institutional appetite for data-driven decision systems.
While much of the region’s fintech momentum in recent years has centred on financial inclusion and digital wallet penetration, industry leaders now argue that the next competitive frontier lies in behavioural intelligence and adaptive engagement.
At the centre of the eNovate–Cobi collaboration is Cobi’s behavioural AI engine, designed to build contextual models of user activity. Rather than analysing transactions in isolation, the system identifies patterns over time and recommends or automatically triggers interventions designed to improve engagement, portfolio performance and long-term customer value.
Combined with eNovate’s role as a central payments and digital services provider to Egyptian banks, telecommunications operators, fintechs, merchants and government-linked entities, the initiative positions the two companies at the intersection of infrastructure and intelligence.
Executives Frame Move as Structural Shift
Nashwa Kamel, Chief Executive Officer of eNovate, said the integration aligns with the company’s ambition to strengthen Egypt’s digital financial backbone.
“eNovate is committed to enabling banks & financial institutions with modern, data-driven capabilities. Partnering with Cobi allows us to introduce real-time intelligence into every digital wallet and payment experience we support, starting with the youth-focused Rize app.”
Darren Edmund, Chief Executive Officer of Cobi, described the partnership as a fundamental evolution in how digital payment systems operate.
“Our partnership with eNovate represents a fundamental shift in how digital payment infrastructure operates. By embedding Cobi as the intelligence layer across eNovate’s ecosystem, we are enabling banks and financial platforms to move beyond static transaction processing toward real-time, adaptive systems that understand and respond to user behaviour instantly.”
This allows banks to personalise at scale, optimise portfolio performance and build deeper, longer-lasting customer relationships.
Toward Agentic Payments and Proactive Finance
Looking ahead, both companies indicate that the partnership will extend beyond analytics and personalisation towards agentic payment experiences, systems where AI not only analyses user behaviour but autonomously recommends or initiates actions to improve financial outcomes.
Such capabilities could include automated savings nudges, contextual credit offers, dynamic budgeting prompts or real-time fraud-prevention triggers, shifting digital wallets from passive tools to proactive financial assistants.
The initial deployment is scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2026, with phased expansion planned across additional eNovate-powered platforms and, potentially, into other regional markets.
As Egypt deepens its digital finance transformation and MENA’s fintech ecosystem matures, experts say the integration of intelligence infrastructure into payments may mark the beginning of a new era, one defined not merely by digital access, but by adaptive, behaviour-aware financial systems designed to anticipate rather than react.
Talking Points
It is a strategic move that eNovate is embedding AI intelligence directly into its payments infrastructure rather than treating it as an add-on feature. By integrating Cobi as a behavioural intelligence layer, the company is signalling that the future of digital payments in Egypt will be driven as much by insight as by infrastructure.
Starting with the youth-focused Rize wallet is particularly smart. Young users are digitally native, data-rich and behaviourally dynamic. If AI-powered personalisation proves effective here, it creates a scalable blueprint for broader financial inclusion and deeper engagement across Egypt’s banking ecosystem.
At Techparley, we see this as part of a wider regional shift. MENA’s fintech ecosystem has moved past basic wallet adoption. The real differentiator now is intelligence, the ability for platforms to understand spending behaviour in real time, anticipate friction, and respond with contextual financial solutions that feel proactive rather than reactive.
Looking ahead, the move towards agentic payments, where systems not only recommend but autonomously trigger actions could redefine digital wallets in Egypt. If executed carefully, this could position eNovate as a pioneer in intelligent payment orchestration across North Africa.
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