Egypt-based Paymob, a financial services for merchants platform, raised $50 million in Series B funding, which the platform will use to grow its product range, expanding in the Egyptian market as well as into new markets across the Middle East and Africa region.
The fund round, which is the largest to be secured under the Series B in Egypt, was led by Kora Capital, PayPal Ventures, and Clay Point together with other investors include Helios Digital Ventures, British International Investment, and Nclude.
All existing investors including A15, FMO, and Global Ventures also participated.
Through that fresh fund, the total funding of Paymob is now exceeding $68.5 million making it one of the most funded companies in the MENA region amid the boom the digital transformation is witnessing across it.
The round also came on the back of strong growth across the Paymob platform in 2021, with the number of merchants and monthly volumes growing by four times (Y-O-Y) 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 small and medium-sized enterprises (SME)s across the region.
“We are thrilled to complete this significant fundraising with the support of such renowned international investors including, PayPal Ventures, the venture capital arm of a global pioneer in the digital payment space. It is a major endorsement of the strategy we have implemented to date and the scale of the opportunities we can harness.” said Islam Shawky, Paymob’s Co-founder, and CEO.
He added that “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.”
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.
Paymob builds an omni-channel payment infrastructure to enable businesses to accept digital payments both online and in-store besides giving them better access to financial services.
According to a recent report published by the CBE, fintech sector witnessed significant growth in the Egyptian market over the past five years, as venture capital investments rose to $159 million with 32 deals concluded in 2021, up from only $1 million raised in 2017 from three fintech deals.
