Paymob raises $35 million: the Egyptian fintech bets on the Gulf and on “agentic commerce”

Paymob, one of Egypt’s leading payment infrastructure players, has closed a $35 million “pre-Series C” round. The round was co-led by Mubadala, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), with participation from British International Investment, Global Ventures and DPI Ventures.

With this round, Paymob brings its total funding to about $125 million. The company had already raised $72 million in its Series B, in two stages: $50 million in 2022, then a $22 million extension in 2024. The announcement comes at a difficult time for funding in the region, which gives it particular significance.

What Paymob does

Founded in 2015 by Alain El Hajj, Islam Shawky and Mostafa El Menessy, Paymob lets merchants accept payments from their customers by every means: cards, mobile wallets, instalment payments, transfers. It offers an online payment gateway, physical terminals, a solution that turns a smartphone into a payment terminal (SoftPOS) and payment links to share by message.

• Present in Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Oman.
• More than 60 payment methods supported.
• More than 390,000 merchants served.
• Retail payment services licence from the Central Bank of the UAE obtained in January 2025.

The Gulf, the new engine

The most striking figure concerns the geography of growth. According to the company, its combined revenue across the four countries tripled in 18 months, and revenue in the Gulf states rose sevenfold, now accounting for nearly half the total. Since obtaining its UAE licence, Paymob has added about 20,000 merchants in its three Gulf markets.

The logic is understandable. The Egyptian market is vast, more than a hundred million people, but the currency has lost much of its value in recent years, reducing the dollar value of revenue. Gulf markets offer stable currencies, high purchasing power and fast digitisation of payments. For an Egyptian fintech raising funds in dollars, expanding in the Gulf is also a way to protect itself against currency risk.

“Agentic commerce”, a new bet

The money will go to the core business, payment acceptance, to products for small and medium-sized businesses, and to new offerings around what the industry calls “agentic commerce”. The term refers to purchases made by software agents, artificial intelligence programs that carry out transactions on behalf of users: booking a ticket, ordering a product, paying a bill.

It is one of the most discussed topics in payments in 2026. If AI assistants start buying in place of consumers, systems will be needed to verify that an agent is actually authorised by its user, to limit amounts, to handle disputes and to fight fraud. Payment infrastructure companies are positioning themselves to provide these building blocks. For Paymob, it is a way to prepare for a market that is still nascent, but which the major card networks are already making a priority.

In practice, an Egyptian or Emirati merchant selling online could soon receive orders placed not by a human customer on its site, but by that customer’s AI assistant. It will need to be able to accept that payment securely, know who is responsible in case of error, and offer a journey suited to a software agent rather than a human. The payment providers that offer these tools first could gain a head start, like those that anticipated mobile payments ten years ago.

A shrinking funding market

The round stands out against the general mood. According to data from the research firm MAGNiTT cited by The Condia, start-ups in the Middle East and North Africa region raised $1.35 billion in 214 deals in the first half of 2026, 22% less in value and 41% fewer deals than a year earlier. Fintechs raised $617 million in 57 deals, down 9%, with the number of deals halved.

Above all, the money is concentrating: the UAE and Saudi Arabia captured about 85% of regional fintech funding, or $523 million. An Egyptian company raising funds in this context owes it largely to its presence in these two markets. Mubadala’s entry into the capital further strengthens this Gulf anchoring. The presence of the EBRD and British International Investment, two public development investors, also shows that institutional funders continue to support the region’s financial infrastructure, where many private funds have pulled out. Their participation also provides a form of endorsement of the company’s governance, useful for future rounds.

Egypt, a difficult but huge market

It would be misleading to see this strategy as a loss of interest in Egypt. The country remains one of the continent’s largest markets for digital payments, driven by the Central Bank of Egypt’s financial inclusion policy, the development of the national instant payment system and the digitisation of small shops. Paymob’s hundreds of thousands of merchants are first and foremost Egyptian, and much of its technical staff works there.

But the Egyptian market has been through a severe currency crisis in recent years, with several successive devaluations of the pound. For a company reporting to its investors in dollars, each devaluation mechanically reduces the value of its Egyptian revenue. Expansion in the Gulf balances this risk. It is a strategy other Egyptian fintechs have followed, and it explains the growing interest of Gulf funds in the Cairo ecosystem.

What to watch

Several questions accompany this round. Will Paymob keep its ambitions in Egypt, which still accounts for half its revenue, its original teams and hundreds of thousands of merchants? Will it be able to hold its own in the Gulf against very well-funded local and international competitors? And will its bet on AI agent commerce turn into revenue, or remain a line in an investor presentation?

For the African ecosystem, Paymob’s story illustrates a deep trend: North African fintechs are increasingly looking to the Gulf, where the capital and the solvent markets are. It is a rational growth strategy. It is also a reminder that Africa still struggles to keep its champions, for lack of capital markets and currencies stable enough to finance them at home.