Egypt's Paymob for digital payments has closed $18.5m in a Series A round led by Global Ventures, the company announced on Thursday. In July 2020, Paymob raised $3.5m as its first tranche of Series A investment. An additional $15m was raised from the same investors led by Dubai-based VC firm Global Ventures. Other investors include Egyptian investment fund A15 and Dutch development bank FMO. It is the largest-ever Series A raised by a fintech company in Egypt. PayMob will use the investments to continue expanding its network of merchants, responding to the growing demand for its services, as well as developing its product portfolio and supporting regional expansion efforts. This comes as a step to be followed by other steps to expand in the region, as it was decided that the company would accelerate its expansion in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other markets throughout the region, during the year 2021. PayMob's share of the mobile wallet infrastructure is more than 85% of the transactions market in Egypt. It also serves merchants in five different markets, including Kenya, Pakistan, Jordan, and Palestine, as well as the main market in Egypt. It makes it the first Egyptian financial technology company to expand outside the local market. Paymob's monthly revenues achieved more than 5-fold growth in 2020, as digital payment solutions were used and provided to many economic sectors, including more than 35,000 local and foreign customers. The total annual payments for PayMob amounted to more than $5bn (More than EGP 80bn). Islam Shawky, the co-founder and CEO of Paymob, said, "We couldn't be more excited for Paymob's next phase of growth; the market opportunity in the region is unprecedented. The large digital payments gap still exists and we are delighted to be working with progressive-thinking regulators to address this." "This latest capital raise will accelerate our progress to reducing the digital payments bottleneck. All our existing investors have increased their holdings, and we thank them both for their support and the confidence they have in our business model and track record of execution," he added. Basil Moftah, General Partner of Global Ventures, said, "We are delighted to lead this momentous fintech fundraise in the region. Paymob has a perfect combination of high-quality technology, a product customers increasingly cannot do without, and an outstanding management team. Their market opportunity is also huge; Egypt's transformation to a cashless society is being enabled by the unique products Paymob has built. We look forward to continuing supporting their expansion." Karim Bishara, Chairperson of A15, said: "As one of the first supporters of PayMob, we are always proud to support a young and enthusiastic team to revolutionize the development and advancement of financial systems inside and outside Egypt. Whereas, witnessing the impact of facilitating financial services for millions of consumers and tens of thousands of merchants along with excessive growth has been a very satisfying experience for A15. "
