Paymob Secures $35 Million to Expand Payments and AI-Powered Commerce Across MENA

Egyptian fintech Paymob has raised $35 million in a pre-Series C funding round as the payments infrastructure company accelerates its expansion across the Middle East and North Africa and develops new products for small and medium-sized businesses.

The round was co-led by Mubadala Investment Company and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), with participation from British International Investment, Global Ventures and DPI Ventures. The latest investment brings Paymob’s total funding to approximately $125 million.

Founded in 2015 by Islam Shawky, Alain El Hajj and Mostafa Menessy, Paymob provides digital payment infrastructure that enables businesses to accept and manage payments across online and offline channels.

Its omnichannel platform supports more than 60 payment methods and now serves more than 390,000 merchants. The company operates across Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Oman.

The latest capital will be used to scale Paymob’s core digital payments acceptance business across the region while expanding its product offering for SME merchants. The company is also developing solutions for what it describes as agentic commerce, an emerging model in which AI-powered systems can increasingly interact with businesses and complete transactions on behalf of users.

Paymob’s growth has increasingly shifted toward the Gulf. Over the past 18 months, its consolidated revenues have tripled across its four markets, while revenue from its GCC operations has grown sevenfold and now represents close to half of the company’s total revenue.

The company has also expanded its merchant base in the GCC following its Retail Payment Services Licence from the Central Bank of the UAE in January 2025. Since receiving the licence, Paymob has onboarded approximately 20,000 merchants across its three GCC markets.

For Paymob, the latest raise comes as the company transitions from an Egyptian payments startup into a broader regional financial technology platform.

“Paymob morphed into a regional platform over the past 18 months, propelled by the exponential growth of our GCC business,” said Islam Shawky, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Paymob. He said the new funding would help the company accelerate its regional growth plans and product roadmap, including its ambition to become a major payments platform for agentic commerce.

The investment also adds Mubadala to Paymob’s shareholder base, alongside a group of existing international investors including PayPal Ventures, Kora Capital, Clay Point Capital, FMO, A15, British International Investment, Helios Digital Ventures, Global Ventures and DPI Ventures.

Paymob’s expansion reflects a broader shift in the region’s fintech sector, where payment companies are increasingly moving beyond basic transaction processing toward integrated financial infrastructure for businesses.

With its latest funding, the Egyptian company is positioning itself for the next phase of that transition — combining payment acceptance, financial management and emerging AI-driven commerce capabilities across an increasingly regional footprint.