Cairo-based fintech Paymob has raised $18.5 million in a Series A round led by Global Ventures, the company announced today. The round is made up of $15 million in glowing funding and $3.5 million that was paid out in July 2020 as the first tranche. A15 and FMO, the Dutch entrepreneurial development bank, were also involved in the transaction. It is Egypt’s largest-ever Series A round raised by a fintech company.

“We couldn’t be more excited for Paymob’s next step of growth; the business probability in the location is unprecedented,” said Islam Shawky, co-founder and CEO of Paymob. The wide digital repayments gap still remains, and we are thrilled to be collaborating with forward-thinking regulators to address it.”

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“This new capital raise would accelerate our progress in reducing the digital payments bottleneck. All of our current merchants have increased their shares, and we thank them all for their support and confidence in our industrial company model and execution track record,” he said.

Here Is What You Need To Know

• With the influx of cash, the company plans to accelerate its expansion into Saudi Arabia and other regional markets this year. It would also put the funds into expanding its regional carrier business and expanding its product line.

• All investors in this round had previously participated in the startup’s $3.5m part Series A fundraise last year.

Why The Investors Invested

Global Ventures is a Dubai-based VC led by Noor Sweid who was previously a managing partner at Beirut-based Leap Ventures and most recently Chief Investment Officer of Dubai Future Foundation, and Basil Moftah, the former president of Intellectual Property & Science at Thomson Reuters. He had led the acquisition of Zawya for Thomson Reuters and exited a $1 billion revenue division of Thomson Reuters to a private equity firm in 2016 for $3.55 billion. The firm generally invests in revenue-generating startups (with at least $1 million in annual revenue) across Middle East & Africa but has made few exceptions. On its website, Global Venture says that they’re looking for startups that are revenue-generating, industry winners, capital-efficient, immensely scalable and have a clear path to exit.

Basil Moftah, General Partner of Global Ventures, said, “We are delighted to lead this momentous fintech fundraise in the region. Paymob has a best mixture of a extraordinarily acceptable technology, a product customers more and increased can not do without, and an top notch administration team. Their market possibility is in addition huge; Egypt’s transformation to a cashless society is being enabled with the useful aid of way of the unique merchandise Paymob has built. We show up ahead to persevering with assisting their expansion

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Established in 1970, FMO is 51-percent held by the Dutch government and 49-percent by private sector institutions. The development finance institution works toward the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals by funding capacity development as well as placing debt and equity investments in sectors such as agribusiness, financial institutions, and energy. During the six months ending June 2020, FMO lost EUR 280 million (USD 330 million) on a total portfolio of EUR 12.7 billion (USD 14.9 billion).

A15 is an Amsterdam-based Middle East and Africa-focused venture capital company that invests in digital products and technology brands. The VC had, in October last year, made a six-figure investment in Cairo-based community-inspired startup, Milango.

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A Look At What Paymob Does

Founded by Islam Shawky, Alain El Hajj and Mostafa El Menessy, Paymob is an infrastructure technology enabler providing payment solutions to empower digital financial service providers across Africa and the Middle East through mobile wallet technology. The startup offers a variety of products and APIs that enable online and offline businesses to receive and send payments. The merchants can without difficulty integrate Paymob’s payment APIs into their websites or mobile applications to collect payments from their customers using first-rate fee strategies such as cards, mobile wallets, and cash on delivery.

The startup said in a statement that revenue for its charge acceptance commercial enterprise enterprise increased by more than 5 times in 2020, with its research now being used by over 35,000 nearby and global shops like Swvl, LG, Samsonite, and the American University in Cairo. To date, the startup claims to have processed repayments of more than $5 billion.

The startup’s mobile wallet infrastructure processes more than 85 per cent of the market share of the transaction’s throughput in the Egyptian market, and serves merchants across five different markets, including Kenya, Pakistan and Palestine, and serving millions of customers on a monthly basis.

Chief operating officer El-Hajj said Paymob’s merchants and partners would benefit directly from the funding as Paymob will ramp up investments in its core payments offering to better serve its existing base and cater for the increasing demand.

“Empowering our merchants and partners networks in Egypt and Africa has and will always be at the heart and core of what we do at Paymob,” he said.

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions.
He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance.
He is also an award-winning writer

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