Egyptian fintech Paymob, which enables merchants to accept digital payments online and in-store, announced today it has raised $50 million in Series B funding. PayPal Ventures, the global corporate venture arm of PayPal, New-York-based venture capital Kora Capital, and London-based Clay Point led the round. New participating investors include Helios Digital Ventures, British International Investment (formerly the CDC Group) and Nclude, the venture fund launched by Global Ventures and three Egyptian banks. Existing investors from its $18.5 million Series A last April — A15, FMO, and Global Ventures — doubled down. The round, which is one of the largest at this stage in Egypt and MENA, brings Paymob’s total funding to over $68.5 million.
Last year, Paymob had over 35,000 local and international merchants using its payment gateways like Swvl, LG, Breadfast and Homzmart. This merchant number, which now includes the likes of Vodafone, LG, Virgin, Chalhoub Group and Decathlon, has tripled to over 100,000. Shawky says Paymob plans to reach a million SMEs in the next couple of years. It’s a grand forecast considering Egypt has over 3 million SMEs. However, Paymob’s strategy to reach that figure is backed by a new product launch in partnership with Mastercard: Tap-on-phone contactless payments. For micro and small merchants, the cost of obtaining a point-of-sale machine and its accompanying hardware can be cutthroat. It presents a considerable barrier to scale as they’ll need to process large volumes over a long period to recoup that expense. The Tap-on-phone product leverages contactless payments technology so that these merchants can turn their NFC-enabled smartphones — personal or commercial — into a POS by downloading a Paymob-powered app.