The news:
- Paymob, an Egypt-born fintech startup, has secured an additional $22 million in funding, following a $50 million in 2022, which brings its total Series B round to $72 million. The company has raised over $90 million since its inception.
- The extension was led by EBRD Venture Capital. Paymob’s Series B round has seen participation from PayPal Ventures, Endeavor Catalyst, British International Investment (BII), FMO, A15, Nclude, and Helios Digital Ventures (HDV).
- The company will use the latest investment to further scale the company's operations across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, with a focus on expanding its suite of products and services.
Since receiving its first Series B investment, Shawky noted that the fintech has improved its product suite, including launching an app for small and medium businesses (SMBs) as well as introducing payment methods like embedded checkout experiences and products like lending and advanced settlements.
Founded in 2015 by college friends — Islam Shawky (CEO), Alain El Hajj, and Mostafa Menessy — who met as undergraduate students at the American University in Cairo, Paymob began as a solution to Egypt’s budding eCommerce market, addressing the lack of payment infrastructure for digital businesses.
Paymob, which has a little over 1,000 employees, has since evolved into an omnichannel payment gateway offering over 50 payment methods, including wallets, cards, buy now pay later (BNPL), and QR payments.
Now, it enables more than 350,000 merchants to accept online and offline payments across five countries across the MENA region, including Egypt, Pakistan, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.
Shawky expressed his excitement about Paymob's growth, noting that the startup has become profitable in Egypt for the first time in the second quarter of 2024. However, the fintech is still not profitable in other countries where it’s operational.
Revenue in Egypt has grown sixfold since mid-2022, a significant achievement for the company. Shawky attributed the success to Paymob's ability to cross-sell additional services, such as lending and advanced settlement options, to its growing merchant base.
Despite offering only online payment services in the UAE, Paymob claims that its transaction volume in the Middle-Eastern nation now matches that of its entire Egyptian business, which took five years to build. Shawky attributes this to the UAE's higher purchasing power, stronger currency, and widespread adoption of digital payment methods.
Paymob, which describes itself as a financial services enabler, reported a total payment volume of $5 billion in 2020 and facilitated over 120 million transactions that year. However, the fintech has yet to disclose the updated numbers.
