Egypt-based financial technology (fintech) startup Paymob, has raised $3.5 million from Global Ventures and the Dutch Entrepreneurial Development Bank FMO with a follow-on investment by A15.

Founded in 2015 by Islam Shawky, Alain El-Hajj and Mostafa El Menessy, Paymob offers “Payment As a Service” (PaaS), providing local and global merchants such as SWVL, ElGouna, Tradeline and Metro Market, serving customers on a monthly basis with online and instore payment products. 

Besides Egypt, the company also operates across five different markets including Kenya, Pakistan and Palestine. The company processes more than 85 per cent of the market share of the transactions throughput in the Egyptian market.

“In a world where consumers are currently adopting digital products in all aspects of their lives, now is the time to invest in Paymob products to empower the digital economy. These unprecedented times has proven the need for a robust digital payments infrastructure to serve the rising demand from all business types and sizes during the pandemic which resulted in a drastic increase of 450 per cent in merchant on-boarding rate since the beginning of Covid-19,” said Islam Shawky, Paymob’s co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO).

Paymob intends to use the funds to continue serving SMEs, expand its merchants’ network and its product offerings and establish a footprint in the GCC and African countries.

“Paymob and Global Ventures share similar DNA – the ability to see problems in a different light, the creativity to rethink how things are done, and the courage to get it done.“ Global Ventures is an international VC firm, with presence in Abu Dhabi, Cairo, Dubai, Jeddah, Philadelphia, and San Francisco,” said Basil Moftah, general partner at Global Ventures.