Analysis
Paymob, the Egypt-founded payments infrastructure provider, raised $35 million in a pre-Series C round co-led by Mubadala Investment Company and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, with British International Investment, Global Ventures and DPI Ventures also participating, according to Wamda and FinTech Futures. The round takes Paymob's total disclosed funding past $125 million.
What Paymob Does
Founded in 2015 by Islam Shawky, Alain El Hajj and Mostafa Menessy, Paymob runs an omnichannel payments platform that lets merchants accept more than 60 payment methods -- cards, mobile wallets, buy-now-pay-later and bank transfers -- through a single technology layer, both online and in person. The company now serves more than 390,000 merchants across Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Oman, similar in spirit to Corridor's bet elsewhere this week that SMB-facing financial infrastructure is still underserved by legacy providers.
“That GCC pivot is central to why Abu Dhabi's Mubadala and the EBRD, both regionally focused investors, co-led this round rather than a purely Egypt-focused fund.”
The Growth Numbers
Paymob's consolidated revenue tripled across its four markets over the past 18 months, and revenue from its Gulf operations alone grew sevenfold over the same period, to the point that the GCC now accounts for roughly half of total revenue -- a sharp shift for a company that built its base in Egypt. That GCC pivot is central to why Abu Dhabi's Mubadala and the EBRD, both regionally focused investors, co-led this round rather than a purely Egypt-focused fund.
Competitive Field
Paymob competes with Egypt's publicly listed Fawry, the incumbent e-payments network, and with Saudi-based Geidea in the Gulf card-acceptance market, alongside global players like Network International expanding into the same corridor. Paymob's pitch is consolidation: one integration covering dozens of local and regional payment rails, rather than merchants stitching together separate processors per country.
The Numbers In Context
This is Paymob's third disclosed institutional round, following a $50 million Series B in 2022 and a $22 million Series B extension led by the EBRD in 2024 -- a steady cadence of EBRD backing across three rounds that suggests the development bank sees MENA payments infrastructure as a long-horizon bet rather than a one-off check.
What Founders And GPs Should Watch
The new capital is earmarked for expanding digital-payments acceptance across MENA and building new products for SME merchants and what the company calls agentic commerce -- AI agents transacting on merchants' behalf. Whether that product actually ships and gets adopted, versus remaining a roadmap slide, is the thing to track before Paymob's next round, given how much of this raise's growth story already leans on the GCC shift rather than a new product line.