Paymob Raises $35M as GCC Growth Drives MENA Expansion

Egyptian payments infrastructure provider Paymob has raised $35M in Pre-Series C funding, underscoring the rapid growth of fintech funding in Egypt as it expands its platform across the MENA region.

Egyptian payments infrastructure provider Paymob has raised $35 million in a Pre-Series C round co-led by Mubadala and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), as rapid growth in the Gulf pushes the company deeper into MENA.

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British International Investment (BII), Global Ventures and DPI Ventures also participated in the round. The funding brings Paymob’s total disclosed funding to about $125 million.

The new capital will support expansion across MENA, scale Paymob’s digital payments acceptance business, and develop new products for SMEs, including tools designed for agentic commerce.

Scaling Paymob Fintech Funding and Regional Growth

The funding comes as Paymob’s business increasingly shifts toward the Gulf. The company said consolidated revenue has tripled over the past 18 months, while revenue from its GCC operations has grown sevenfold and now accounts for close to half of total revenue.

Paymob currently operates across Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Oman and serves more than 390,000 merchants. Paymob entered the UAE in 2023 and secured a Retail Payment Services Licence from the Central Bank of the UAE in January 2025. It says it has since onboarded about 20,000 merchants across its three GCC markets.

The company’s GCC expansion builds on its earlier Egyptian business, where it established itself as a payment infrastructure provider for small and medium-sized businesses.

Building Unified Payments Infrastructure

Paymob gives merchants access to more than 60 payment methods through a single integration, covering cards, local payment networks, buy now, pay later services and bank instalment products. Its infrastructure supports both online and offline payments, while its broader product suite includes tools for transaction management, reporting, payouts and financial operations.

That single-platform approach is becoming more relevant as merchants expand across MENA, where payment methods, financial institutions and local infrastructure vary from one market to another. Rather than requiring businesses to build separate integrations for every market, Paymob is positioning its infrastructure as a common technology layer across its regional footprint.

Future Roadmap and Agentic Commerce

The new funding will also support Paymob’s expansion into products for SME merchants and agentic commerce. In this model, AI agents can discover products and initiate purchases on behalf of consumers, creating new requirements for payment infrastructure around authentication, transaction processing and settlement.

Paymob is therefore looking beyond conventional payment acceptance as it develops products around its existing merchant base. “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,” said Islam Shawky, Paymob’s co-founder and CEO.

Investor Base and Strategic Expansion

Mubadala participated through its MENA Venture Capital Fund, adding the Abu Dhabi-based sovereign investor to a shareholder base that includes PayPal Ventures, Kora Capital, Clay Point, FMO, A15 and Global Ventures.

The EBRD is also a returning investor. It led a $22 million Series B extension for Paymob in 2024, taking the company’s Series B total to $72 million.

Paymob’s latest raise gives the company additional capital to build on its Gulf momentum while expanding its payments infrastructure and SME product offering across the wider MENA market.

Why it matters to MENA Startups

Paymob’s latest numbers highlight how regional fintech growth is increasingly shifting toward the Gulf. For Paymob, the strategy is shifting from entering individual markets to building a regional payments infrastructure business that can serve merchants across different payment ecosystems.

Its growth also shows why payment infrastructure remains a key layer of the MENA startup economy: as businesses expand across borders, they need payment technology that can handle local methods while keeping integrations and operations manageable.