Egyptian Payments Startup Paymob Raises $3.5 Million to Fuel Its Regional Expansion

Cairo-based payment startup Paymob has raised $3.5 million investment in a round led by Dubai’s Global Ventures and Dutch Entrepreneurial Development Bank FMO with the participation of existing investor A15, it announced in a statement today to MENAbytes.

Founded in 2015 by Islam Shawky, Alain El Hajj and Mostafa El Menessy, Paymob enables online and offline merchants to accept payments from their customers using different products and solutions. For online merchants, Paymob offers a complete payment gateway that can be integrated into a merchant’s website or mobile app using its APIs. The payment gateway that comes with all the standard features also enables the merchants to receive recurring payments from their customers and offers installments too.

Its second online solution, payment links, enable merchants to receive payments by sharing a link with their customers. They can share the link with multiple customers (using social media or any other channel) to have them pay for a product or email customized invoices with the link to pay. Paymob’s product for offline retailers is a POS solution that comes with its own POS device enabling them to receive in-store card payments.

All of the Paymob’s products also allow the merchants to accept payments from their customers using different mobile wallets, kiosks and even loyalty programs (in exchange of points).

The startup in a statement claimed that its mobile wallets infrastructure processes more than 85 percent of the market share of the transactions in the Egyptian market. It also said that it is serving merchants across five different markets including Kenya, Pakistan and Palestine.

“Paymob is continuously investing in its infrastructure to cater for the digitization of the payment ecosystem by empowering thousands of local and global merchants such as Swvl, ElGouna, Tradeline, Befit, Gourmet and Metro market, serving millions of customers on a monthly basis with premium online and instore payment products,” said the statement.

(Its product is apparently being used in Kenya and Pakistan by Swvl as the company is present in both these markets. It is not clear if Paymob has other clients in these markets).

The Egyptian startup plans to use the investment to accelerate its expansion to more markets in Africa and GCC which it said will help it solidify its position as one of the leading payment service providers in the region. The investment will also allow Paymob to empower the underserved SMES with improved and more accessible digital payment offerings.