Paymob, Egypt’s omni-channel merchant financial services platform, has raised $50 million in Series B funding. The proceeds will be used to expand the company’s product range and expand into new markets across the Middle East and Africa region.
Kora Capital, PayPal Ventures, and Clay Point led the round. Other new participating investors included Helios Digital Ventures, British International Investment, and Nclude. All existing investors including A15, FMO, and Global Ventures also participated.
This funding round brings the total funding of Paymob to over $68.5 million, making it one of the most funded companies in the region.
“The Paymob team is leveraging key structural changes taking place across Egypt and the Middle East, as these economies evolve from being primarily cash-led to a digital heavy mode of transacting. We look forward to the road ahead,” said Nitin Saigal, Founder, Kora Management.
Paymob builds an omni-channel payment infrastructure to enable businesses to accept digital payments both online and in-store in addition to giving them better access to financial services. Paymob’s gateway has the largest number of payment methods in the Egyptian market; in addition to conventional bank cards, Paymob added new payment methods such as mobile wallets, QR payments, bank cards’ instalments, Buy-Now Pay-Later, and consumer finance payment options to support merchants in increasing their volume of transactions and growing revenues. Recently, Paymob partnered with Mastercard to introduce Tap-on-Phone in Egypt — the first of its kind in the country. Paymob plans to launch cards for its merchants to enable B2B transactions and build tools for merchants to better manage and grow their business.
This unique proposition has enabled Paymob to attract numerous international players such as Vodafone, LG, Virgin, Chalhoub Group, and Decathlon that have turned to Paymob’s digital payment products in addition to fast-growing companies such as Swvl, Breadfast, and Homzmart that are relying on Paymob to power their payment infrastructure to enhance customer experience and increase conversion at checkout.
The round comes on the back of strong growth across the Paymob platform in 2021, with the number of merchants and monthly volumes growing by 4x year-on-year as of December 2021. Paymob onboarded over 100,00 merchants in less than two and half years as part of its plan to reach 1 million SMEs across the region.
“Central Bank of Egypt initiatives that are continuously being introduced in the market to support fintech companies were key to Paymob’s growth. The Central Bank has created a regulatory framework to help fintech flourish and participate in making Egypt’s digital financial inclusion ambitions a reality,” said Islam Shawky, Paymob’s Co-founder, and CEO.
Paymob has recently announced its market entry to Pakistan, which has a population of over 220 million, and over 4 million SMEs across the country, and plans to onboard over 100,000 merchants within the first 24 months of launching its operations. This expansion should be followed by additional markets in the GCC and North Africa.
