Paymob Secures $35M to Fuel MENA Expansion in Fintech Push

Paymob has pulled in USD 35 million in a Pre-Series C round, with Mubadala and the EBRD co-leading the deal, as the Egyptian fintech pushes harder on expansion across the MENA region. British International Investment, Global Ventures and DPI Ventures also joined the round, adding more heavyweight backing as the company looks to widen its reach and build new products for SMEs and what it calls agentic commerce.

The timing makes sense, to be honest. Payments across MENA are still a bit of a patchwork. Merchants often juggle BNPL providers, local card networks and bank instalment schemes, and that can turn operations into a bit of a faff, especially when a business starts selling across borders. Paymob’s pitch is simple enough: put more than 60 payment methods on one platform, under one contract, one API and one dashboard. On paper, that is spot on for merchants who want less mess and more control.

Founded in 2015 by Islam Shawky, Alain El Hajj and Mostafa Menessy, Paymob has been building itself as a payments infrastructure player rather than just another checkout tool. Its offering covers online and offline payments, transaction processing, financial management and access to other financial services. That wider stack matters because, in this market, merchants usually do not want ten separate systems if one can do the job.

The company first secured a licence from the Central Bank of Egypt, then moved into the UAE in 2023. In January 2025, it obtained its Retail Payment Services Licence from the Central Bank of the UAE. Since then, Paymob says it has onboarded around 20,000 merchants across its three GCC markets, which is not bad at all for a business still in regional build-out mode.

In a statement tied to the funding, the company said, “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.” That next phrase, agentic commerce, will probably make some readers pause. Well... I mean, in plain terms, it points to digital transactions increasingly handled through automated systems and AI-driven agents, not only by people clicking buttons themselves.

For Arageek readers who follow the region’s startup scene closely, this is the sort of move that says a lot about where fintech is heading. I’ve seen founders across MENA complain that scaling from one market to another can feel like reinventing the wheel every time, especially in payments. So I reckon Paymob’s real test is not raising the capital, but proving that a single technology layer can work smoothly across countries with very different payment habits and regulation.

That said, the investor mix is also worth watching. Mubadala brings a major regional institutional name into Paymob’s shareholder base, while the EBRD adds another level of institutional support as the company expands beyond the markets where it already has a stronger footing. On the flip side, fresh capital always raises expectations, and the company will now be under more pressure to turn GCC traction into broader MENA growth.

The next stretch will likely centre on three things: scaling its core digital payments acceptance business, rolling out SME-focused products, and developing its agentic commerce offering in a way that merchants can actually use without it becoming too complciated. And believe it or not, that practical part may matter more than the buzzwords. If Paymob can keep things simple while expanding across fragmented ecosystems, it could strengthen its position as one of the region’s more serious fintech infrastructure bets.

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