Paymob – founders
Financial infrastructure company Paymob has secured a $35 million Paymob Pre-Series C funding round co-led by Abu Dhabi sovereign investor Mubadala Investment Company and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Other participating institutional investors in the round include British International Investment, Global Ventures, and DPI Ventures. The company plans to deploy the capital to expand operations across the Middle East and North Africa while scaling its core acceptance technology.
Capital Allocation and Product Roadmap
The newly raised capital will fund the introduction of specialized digital products tailored for small and medium-sized enterprises. In addition, the firm intends to support emerging commerce models powered by AI agents. The funding round follows steady financial metrics over the past 18 months across multiple operating territories.
During this period, consolidated revenues increased threefold across four markets. Meanwhile, regional revenues in Gulf Cooperation Council countries expanded by seven times, accounting for nearly 50 percent of total firm revenue. After obtaining its Retail Payment Services Licence from the Central Bank of the UAE in January 2025, the company onboarded roughly 20,000 merchants across three GCC markets.
Paymob Pre-Series C and Executive Commentary
Company executives indicated that regional growth in the Gulf served as a catalyst for broadening financial infrastructure across wider markets.
Paymob morphed into a regional platform over the past 18 months, propelled by the exponential growth of our GCC business. This Pre-Series C funding round will help us accelerate our growth plan across the MENA region and fast-track our product roadmap to become the go-to payments platform for agentic commerce.
Islam Shawky, Co-Founder and CEO of Paymob
Institutional backers noted that the transaction supports digital modernization initiatives across regional financial markets.
Paymob has built the payments infrastructure that MENA’s SME economy has been missing, a single, scalable layer that removes friction for merchants and unlocks growth across markets that have historically been underserved by digital finance.
Bruno Lusic, VC and Growth Investor, EBRD
Resolving Payment Fragmentation for Regional Merchants
Merchants across the region frequently encounter a fragmented payments ecosystem composed of buy-now-pay-later services, local card schemes, and bank instalment plans. Operating across disparate systems typically requires businesses to integrate up to eight distinct payment methods. Consequently, firms face separate contractual negotiations, integration pipelines, and settlement reconciliation processes.
To simplify payment operations, the platform consolidates over 60 payment methods into a single application programming interface, unified contract, and centralised dashboard. The system enables physical and digital merchants to process transactions and manage cash flows through integrated fintech architecture.
Regional Expansion and Operational Footprint
Founded in 2015 by Islam Shawky, Alain El Hajj, and Mostafa Menessy, the firm initially secured regulatory licensing from the Central Bank of Egypt. The company later established a presence in the UAE and opened an office in Riyadh in 2023 after obtaining a Payment Technical Service Provider license from Saudi Payments to operate in Saudi Arabia. It also established an office in Oman during the same year.
Today, the company serves more than 390,000 merchants across its regional footprint. Its broader shareholder base includes PayPal Ventures, Kora Capital, Clay Point Capital, FMO, A15, and Helios Digital Ventures alongside the participants in the Paymob Pre-Series C round.
