Paymob's $35m round shows an Egyptian payments firm now earning in the Gulf

Paymob, the payments infrastructure company founded in Cairo in 2015, said on Monday, September 21, that it had raised $35m in a pre-Series C round co-led by Mubadala Investment Company, Abu Dhabi's sovereign investor, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. British International Investment, Global Ventures and DPI Ventures also took part. The round lifts Paymob's disclosed funding to roughly $125m and is its first raise since a $22m Series B extension in 2024.

The sum is modest by the standards of global fintech. The story behind it is not. According to the company, consolidated revenue tripled across its four markets over the past 18 months, while revenue from the Gulf grew sevenfold and now accounts for close to half of the total. A business built to serve Egyptian merchants has, in a little over a year, become a regional processor whose centre of gravity sits in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. The arrival of Mubadala on the cap table formalises that shift.

A Cairo company with a Gulf income statement

Paymob was founded by Islam Shawky, Alain El Hajj and Mostafa Menessy and holds a licence from the Central Bank of Egypt. It moved into the UAE in 2023, opened offices in Riyadh and Oman the same year, and secured a Payment Technical Service Provider licence from Saudi Payments. The decisive step came in January 2025, when the Central Bank of the UAE granted it a Retail Payment Services Licence. Since then, the company says, it has signed roughly 20,000 merchants across its three Gulf markets. Its total base, it says, exceeds 390,000 merchants across Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Oman.

Those numbers explain the geography of the revenue. Egypt supplies volume: a large population and a broad base of small merchants. But earnings in Egyptian pounds are exposed to the currency risk that foreign investors price into every Egyptian asset, and they translate into fewer dollars whenever the pound weakens. Gulf merchants pay in currencies pegged to the dollar and tend to carry higher ticket sizes. Twenty thousand Gulf merchants can therefore weigh as much in the accounts as a far larger number of Egyptian ones.

Mr Shawky described the change plainly. "Paymob morphed into a regional platform over the past 18 months, propelled by the exponential growth of our GCC business," he said in the announcement.

Why a sovereign fund and a development bank

The investor mix is telling. The EBRD first backed Paymob in 2024 and led that year's extension; development finance institutions such as British International Investment and the Dutch lender FMO were already on the register alongside PayPal Ventures. Development money of this kind looks for financial inclusion and small business access, which Paymob's Egyptian franchise delivers. Bruno Lusic, a venture and growth investor at the EBRD, framed the deal in exactly those terms, saying Paymob "has built the payments infrastructure that MENA's SME economy has been missing".

Mubadala's interest is different. It manages a portfolio it puts at $385bn. Ali Eid Al Mheiri, an executive director in its UAE investments platform, said that "Paymob's expansion in the UAE aligns closely with our ambition under our MENA Venture Capital Fund." Put simply, Abu Dhabi wants regional champions to grow inside the Emirates, and a processor that has already won a UAE licence and thousands of local merchants fits that aim.

For Paymob, the combination is useful. Development lenders lend credibility with regulators in Egypt and North Africa; a Gulf sovereign brings proximity to the market that now produces half the revenue, and possibly to the large enterprise and government clients that smaller processors find hard to reach.

Selling simplicity in a fragmented market

The commercial pitch rests on fragmentation. Paymob argues that merchants in the region typically need seven to eight payment methods, each with its own integration, negotiation and settlement cycle. Cards, local debit schemes, wallets, instalment providers and bank transfers vary from country to country. Paymob offers access to more than 60 methods through one contract, one API and one dashboard, across online checkout, physical terminals, software point of sale on phones and payment links.

That is a familiar strategy: Adyen and Stripe built global businesses by aggregating complexity. The difference in the Middle East is that local licensing, domestic schemes and settlement rules still favour companies with regulatory footprints in each country. Paymob's four licences are a moat of sorts, though not a deep one: global acquirers, Gulf banks and well-funded regional rivals compete for the same merchants, and pricing in card acceptance tends to fall as markets mature.

The company says the new capital will scale its core acceptance business, fund products for small and medium merchants and prepare for agentic commerce, the idea that software agents will initiate purchases on behalf of consumers and businesses. The last item is the most fashionable and the least proven. For now, the near-term returns are likelier to come from selling more services, such as lending, payouts and financial management tools, to the merchants Paymob already processes for.

A thin market for regional capital

The round lands in a cautious funding environment. Citing MAGNiTT data, Dealroom noted that startups in the Middle East and North Africa raised $1.35bn across 214 deals in the first half of 2026, with funding down 22 per cent and deal count down 41 per cent year on year. Fintech drew $617m across 57 deals, and the UAE and Saudi Arabia accounted for 85 per cent of it.

Those figures show where money is still flowing: to Gulf-facing companies with revenue. Paymob qualifies on both counts, which helps explain why it chose a pre-Series C label rather than a full Series C. Neither the company nor its investors disclosed a valuation. A bridge-sized round from strategic and development investors lets a company extend its runway and demonstrate another year of Gulf growth before testing a larger price with crossover or growth funds. It also avoids putting a number on the business while comparable listings in the region remain scarce.

Our view

Paymob's raise is small, but it marks a strategic turn that founders across North Africa should study. The company did not grow its way out of Egypt's currency problem; it moved its earnings to dollar-pegged markets while keeping Egypt as a base for engineering talent and merchant volume. That model, Cairo cost base and Gulf revenue line, is likely to become the default for ambitious Egyptian fintechs.

Investors should watch three things. First, whether Gulf growth holds once the easy merchant wins are in, because acceptance margins compress quickly when banks and global acquirers respond. Second, whether Paymob can attach credit and treasury products to its merchant base, which is where payments companies earn durable returns. Third, the valuation: the absence of a disclosed figure, and the choice of a pre-Series C label, suggest both sides preferred to defer that conversation. The next priced round will reveal whether the market pays for Gulf revenue at Gulf multiples, or still discounts a company headquartered in Cairo.

Sources

• Mubadala: Mubadala invests in the $35 million pre-Series C round in Paymob
• Wamda: Paymob raises $35 million pre-Series C led by Mubadala and EBRD
• Dealroom: Egypt's Paymob raises $35m as GCC revenue jumps sevenfold
• PYMNTS: Paymob secures $35 million to expand payment coverage across MENA

Filed under Fintech. Written by InvestTimes Editorial under our editorial standards. Commentary and analysis for information only, not investment advice.