21-year-old Egyptian-British founder is positioning 99 App as more than a fintech, but rather as a movement
United Kingdom, 19th May 2026 —99 App today announced that it has opened the waiting list for customers who want to sign up for the United Kingdom’s first digital neobank that’s built simultaneously for ethical and Sharia-aligned consumers. Abdalla Lotfy, 99 App’s 21-year-old Egyptian-British founder, is positioning 99 App as more than a fintech, but rather as a movement. The product is a mobile-first current account with values alignment built into the core, including an integrated giving platform routed through registered UK charities and a screening engine that filters financial products on both ethical and Sharia criteria using the same database. It also provides Cashback, along with other features tailored to every segment from students to Gen Alpha.
“I did not originally set out to build a neobank. I started out reading philosophy,” explained Lotfy, who entered King’s College London at 16 and is now finishing his Master’s at Imperial College Business School. “Reading philosophy forced me to look at the systems I had been raised in, instead of taking them for granted. The more I read across psychology, economics, and the existential writers, the more I understood that a great deal of what is accepted as ordinary is the result of choices that benefit a small number of people at the cost of everyone else. With 99 App, we’re going to change this status quo.”
Unlike traditional banks, 99 App will not provide capital for industries that its customers would refuse to fund, e.g., industries that pollute and exploit people, weapons, etc. Instead, 99 App puts choice back in thecustomer’shands. 99 App recognizes that the ethical consumer and the Sharia-aligned consumer want the same thing for different reasons, and that the technology now exists to give it to them at the same time, in the same product.
Britain’s 31 million ethical and Sharia-aligned consumers finally have a serious challenger. The Arabic word Sharia (ﺔﻌيرﺷ) literally translates as “the path to the watering place.” It is a system of principles for living, not a body of mystical or secretive doctrine, and in the context of finance, it functions as a framework for distinguishing capital that builds from capital that harms. Ethicalfinance, drawn from a separate tradition rooted in cooperative and conscience-driven economics, reaches the same set of conclusions through a different route. The two frameworks overlap so closely on what they refuse to fund that 99 App applies a single screening engine to satisfy both audiences. Both frameworks reject three practices that mainstream neobanking treats as ordinary.
99 App has assembled an experienced management team. 99App’s CCO/MLRO is a former Vice President at Barclays. Its CTO is the current/former CTO of Papel, where he runs a PCI-DSS Level 1 certified payments infrastructure with 50+ engineers across Visa, Mastercard, and Troy schemes. Its Deputy CTO came from JPMorgan. Its advisor, Christophe Schwarz, was CTO of five fintechs and Managing Director at Barclays and UBS, and joined for zero cash compensation.
About 99 Financial Technologies Ltd
99Financial Technologies Ltd is a London-headquartered fintech building the United Kingdom’s first digital neobank designed simultaneously for ethical and Sharia-aligned consumers.
For more information, or to join the waitlist, visit https://99app.co.uk
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Media Contact
Organization: 99 Financial Technologies Ltd
Contact Person: Abdalla Lotfy
Website: https://99app.co.uk
Email: Send Email
Contact Number: +447777737567
Country:United Kingdom
Release id:45198
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