Some 430 merchants left their stalls and workshops to protest outside Nubda Market’s offices in Dokki on Wednesday, accusing the Egyptian shopping platform of burying sellers who refuse to buy paid promotion. By lunchtime, shoppers were queuing at folding tables on the pavement, and the company’s app was directing customers towards them. Sellers said the gathering had generated 6,240 purchases worth E£8.6 million (about €146,000).
The protest began at 09:00, with merchants carrying cardboard price boards and stacks of unsold goods. Many said their listings had slipped down the app’s search results after they declined Nubda’s optional promotion package, which costs up to E£4,500 a month. “We are not paying to be seen in our own neighbourhood,” said Marta Vuković, who sells kitchenware through the platform.
The pavement beats the search page
Nubda says its ranking system considers delivery speed, customer ratings and whether shops are open; it denies punishing merchants who reject paid promotion. But vendors said their order counts fell sharply after they declined the package, even when their ratings stayed high. Myron Turner, a Cairo-based retail consultant, said the sellers had little way to test that claim because the platform does not publish how much weight it gives each factor.
Then the protest became an accidental sales event. Nubda’s “open nearby” feature pushed the merchants’ profiles towards the top of local recommendations after their shops were marked open and many sellers gathered at the same location. Shoppers arriving to ask about the dispute began buying goods directly from the pavement stalls, while others placed orders through the app.
By 14:00, Nubda said its system had recorded 1,140 completed orders linked to the gathering, worth E£1.9 million (about €32,000). The sellers’ larger tally includes cash and card purchases outside the app, said Vuković, who showed a reporter handwritten totals and payment slips. “For three years the app told customers we were invisible; today it sent them to our pavement,” she said.
Company promises a manual review
Nubda chief executive Juri W. Freitag said the location feature had “worked as designed” and that the company had not paid to promote the protest. He announced a 30-day pause on changes to seller visibility scores and said merchants could request a manual review of their listings. The company did not say how many requests it expected or whether sellers would receive compensation for lost sales.
The dispute lands as Egyptian merchants face rising rent, delivery charges and the cost of importing household goods. Nubda has about 18,000 active Cairo sellers, according to figures it provided, and takes a commission of between 6% and 12% on app orders. Freitag said paid promotion was optional and helped small shops reach customers; merchants at the protest argued that declining it had become a commercial penalty.
The sellers plan to return next Wednesday unless Nubda publishes a clearer account of how its rankings work. The company said it would share a revised explanation with merchants by 30 September, but did not commit to releasing the underlying scoring formula. On Wednesday, the pavement market was still drawing customers as vendors packed their goods into taxis and delivery tricycles.
