CAIRO: PayPal is looking to boost its presence North Africa and the Middle by seeking to sign up between 20,000 to 25,000 merchants in an effort to garner 10 percent of the region's e-commerce customers over the next two years. According to the company, PayPal is currently available in 7 countries of the MENA region, with one million customers, but the company's CEO Elias Ghanem said they expect their growth to be “exponentially" solid. He said “PayPal is facing increasing competition from start-ups such as Stripe, Braintree and WePay, which also provide tools and services for sellers to accept payments online." The company currently has 113.2 million active accounts through June this year, but with the MENA region only now getting into the e-commerce sector, PayPal believes there to be much mobility for the region. Countries like Egypt still remain outside and unable to use PayPal, but with the banking sector opening up in recent years following the Arab Spring, the US-based company hopes to enter these markets, with tens of millions of potential users still to be tapped. PayPal also said they had inked an agreement with Aramex, the largest courier company in the Middle East and North Africa, to make overseas transactions easier for Middle East customers using Aramex's Shop & Ship service.
