Paymob Raises $18.5m Funding, Egypt’s Largest Ever Series A Round

Egyptian fintech startup, Paymob has closed an $18.5 million Series A to scale its solution across North Africa and the Middle East.

The round was led by Dubai-based VC firm Global Ventures, with other investors including Egyptian investment fund, A15 and Dutch development bank, FMO also participating.

Paymob’s $18.5 million raise is the largest Series A round in Egypt. The fintech startup had initially closed $3.5 million before raising an additional $15 million to complete its Series A investment.

Founded in 2015 by Islam Shawky, Alain El Hajj and Mostafa El Menessy, Paymob provides a platform to facilitate customer payments for merchants through its unique payment APIs. The startup also offers a POS solution For offline merchants to easily receive card payments.

According to CEO, Islam Shawky, Paymob plans to leverage its new funding to expand into more Sub-Saharan African countries as well as other regions including Saudi Arabia. Apart from Egypt, Kenya is the only other African country where Paymob currently holds operations.

The fintech company says it has processed over $5 billion worth of payment transactions from over 35,000 local and international merchants such as Swvl, Tradeline, Breadfast and LG. 

Interestingly, Paymob’s Series A comes just two days after one of Egypt’s leading VC firms, Algebra Ventures launched a $90 million fund geared towards financing early-stage startups in the country. Moreover, another VC company, Sawari Ventures had secured a $63.8 million investment.

Although these companies did not take part in the latest Paymob round, the timing of the startup’s fundraise further proves that Egypt’s fintech ecosystem is witnessing rapid growth, and this is driving greater investor appetite.

We are delighted to lead this momentous fintech fundraise in the region. Paymob has a perfect combination of high-quality technology, product customers increasingly cannot do without, and an outstanding management team.

Basil Moftah, General Partner at Global Ventures

“Their market opportunity is also huge; Egypt’s transformation to a cashless society is being enabled by the unique products Paymob has built,” Basil added.