SIDEUP and Paymob Join Forces to Boost MENA E-Commerce with Integrated Payments

Editorial Team

Last updated 21-12-2025

3 min

SIDEUP partners with Paymob to enhance e-commerce payment solutions in MENA.

SIDEUP merchants gain access to Paymob’s digital payment tools and flexible instalment options.

The partnership aims to support small and medium-sized businesses as competition intensifies.

Paymob sees this as a step towards expanding its payment ecosystem in Egypt and beyond.

SIDEUP integrates logistics and fulfillment services, highlighting its commitment to the regional approach.

SIDEUP has struck a new partnership with Paymob, and it’s one of those moves that feels spot on for the region’s fast‑moving e‑commerce scene. The idea is simple enough: SIDEUP’s merchants — more than 3,000 online stores at this point — will now have access to Paymob’s digital payment tools and flexible instalment options. On paper, it might sound like a bit of a faff, but anyone who has tried to scale an online store in Egypt or Saudi Arabia knows how much difference a smoother checkout experience can make.

What caught my attention is how both sides are framing this. SIDEUP’s CEO, Waleed Rashed, said the partnership reflects an ongoing push to keep delivering integrated services for the small and medium‑sized businesses the platform supports. I’ve heard that refrain many times from founders across the MENA region, but here, the integration does feel particularly practical. As Rashed put it, SIDEUP wants to help sellers “grow and succeed” as e‑commerce competition heats up — and, well… I mean, that’s definately the name of the game today.

On the flip side, Paymob’s Co‑founder and CEO, Islam Shawky, described the deal as part of a broader strategy to expand the company’s payment ecosystem across Egypt and beyond. Paymob already offers over 60 payment methods and serves hundreds of thousands of merchants, so plugging that infrastructure into SIDEUP’s logistics‑heavy platform seems like a natural step. Shawky noted that more flexible instalments are becoming essential as consumer behaviour shifts, something I’ve seen echoed in plenty of founder roundtables Arageek has been part of.

The partnership also taps into SIDEUP’s wider setup. The platform connects more than 25 shipping companies — Aramex, DHL, J&T, iMile and others — and bundles everything from warehousing to fulfilment and cash‑on‑delivery into a single system. SIDEUP started in Egypt back in 2019 before expanding into Saudi Arabia in 2022 and later moving its headquarters to Riyadh. The company has also drawn investment from names like 500 Startups, Launch Africa VC and multiple angel groups, which shows how much faith there is in its regional approach.

Paymob, meanwhile, has been pushing hard across the Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan. It launched in Pakistan in 2021, entered the UAE in 2022 and opened its Riyadh office in 2023 after securing a local licence. The company, founded in 2015, is backed by investors such as PayPal Ventures, Kora Capital, Global Ventures and British International Investment. With more than 1,400 employees and a huge merchant base, it’s no surprise they’re chuffed to bits about widening their footprint in Saudi and Egypt.

I reckon partnerships like this one show how layered the region’s e‑commerce ecosystem has become. Logistics, payments, fulfilment, consumer finance — they’re all starting to overlap in a way that benefits smaller merchants who don’t have the resources to juggle everything separately. And believe it or not, that’s exactly the kind of practical, boots‑on‑the‑ground progress many founders across MENA keep telling us they want to see.

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