Egyptian fintech firm Paymob raises $50 million led by PayPal Ventures and Kora Capital – TechCrunch
Fintech Egypt Paymoballows merchants to accept digital payments online and in-store, announced today that it has raised $50 million in Series B funding.
PayPal Ventures, the global venture arm of PayPal, New York-based venture capital fund Kora Capital and London-based Clay Point led the round.
New entrants include Helios Digital Ventures, British International Investment (formerly CDC Group) and Nclude, a venture fund founded by Global Ventures and three Egyptian banks. Existing investors from it $18.5 million Series A Last April – A15, FMO and Global Ventures – doubled.
This round, which is one of the largest at this stage in Egypt and MENA, brings Paymob’s total funding to over $68.5 million.
Paymob works with businesses and merchants of all sizes. Its omnichannel payment infrastructure allows them to accept payments through a variety of methods, which CEO Islam Shawky claims is the largest in Egypt. These various options include bank cards, mobile wallets, QR payments, bank card installments, BNPL and consumer finance payment options. Paymob also has a POS solution for offline merchants where they can receive card payments in-store.
“Our mission is that we want to help merchants grow,” explains Shawsky, who launched the Cairo-based fintech in 2015 with Alain El Hajj and Mostafa Menessy. “So we come together to offer merchants, whether SMEs or international brands, the ability to accept all those payment methods and, therefore, increase the probability and enhance probability for them to make a purchase and hopefully increase sales.”
Last year, Paymob had more than 35,000 domestic and international merchants use its payment gateways such as Swvl, LG, Breadfast and Homzmart. This number of sellers, which now includes companies like Vodafone, LG, Virgin, Chalhoub Group and Decathlon, has tripled to more than 100,000. Shawky said Paymob plans to reach one million SMEs over the next few years.
That’s a big forecast given that Egypt has more than 3 million SMEs. However, Paymob’s strategy to reach that number is supported by the launch of a new product in partnership with Mastercard: Tap-on-Phone contactless payments.
For micro and small merchants, the cost of acquiring a point-of-sale machine and its accompanying hardware can be very low. It presents a significant barrier to scale as they will need to process large volumes over a long period of time to cover that cost.
Tap-on-phone products leverage contactless payment technology so these merchants can turn NFC-enabled smartphones – personal or commercial – into POS machines by downloading a Paymob-enabled app .
“For us, this is a game changer for face-to-face transactions as it opens up the market for us and helps us grow,” said the CEO. He also mentioned that the product will be rolled out to new merchants while acting as a complement to traditional point-of-sale devices, allowing Paymob to stay ahead of competitors like Fawry and PayTabs. Similar companies in other regions across Africa include CinetPay, Ozow and Flutterwave.
Paymob’s rich product suite is what attracted co-lead investor Kora Management. According to company founder Nitin Saigal, Paymob is “innovating at scale in the offline shopping and online payment gateway space as Egypt and the Middle East transition from being primarily cash to heavy digital transaction method”. Among its other plans for merchants include the introduction of a new payment platform and the launch of a card to enable B2B transactions.
Since last year, various fintechs in Egypt have hailed the financial inclusion initiatives of the pinnacle bank (Central Bank of Egypt) and Paymob is no exception. Shawky says these things ability to judge – including issuing more than 20 million Meeza tokens and 25 million wallets and licensing companies to distribute and operate POS devices – are some of the reasons why Paymob has seen remarkable growth. tell.
Paymob reported a total payment volume of $5 billion last year; It is impossible to know what this number looks like right now. But in other metrics shared by the company, it said its monthly volume has increased fourfold year-on-year since December 2021. Paymob has processed more than 120 million transactions, according to the company. information on its website.
Expansion to Pakistan could help Paymob grow faster later this year. According to a statement, Egypt’s fintech plans to add 100,000 merchants within the next two years from the South Asian country, home to more than 4 million SMEs.
Paymob claims to serve merchants in other markets, including Kenya and Palestine; however, have not set up shop in these regions yet. Instead, the company sets goals some of the GCC and North African markets as this growth finance provides the strength needed to launch those markets. Paymob will also pursue more market share in Egypt and introduce more services in its product suite, including working capital provisioning and expense management software.
“Paymob shares our mission and ambition in driving digital payments adoption – it has made impressive strides in supporting the growth and success of underserved SMBs. services,” said Ashish Aggarwal, director at PayPal Ventures, a co-lead investor.
This is PayPal’s first MENA investment and appears to be CVC’s second investment in Africa after South African open-finance startup Stitch. Although a global recession venture capital (yet) reflection in Africa much), PayPal’s participation continues a trend from last year that saw global investors make their first batch of deals, particularly in the fintech sector, which contributed 60% of the total. venture capital.
