Egypt: Fintech Paymob raises $35 million from Mubadala and the EBRD
The Egyptian start-up Paymob announced on September 30, 2026, the closing of a $35 million pre-Series C funding round, led by the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Investment Company and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), reports Disrupt Africa.
British International Investment, Global Ventures, and DPI Ventures also participated in the operation. Founded in 2015 in Cairo by Islam Shawky, Alain El Hajj, and Mostafa Menessy, the company had previously brought its Series B round to $72 million in September 2024, according to the same source.
A payment infrastructure born in Cairo
Paymob provides merchants with digital payment acceptance tools: terminals, payment links, and online collection, totaling more than sixty solutions according to Disrupt Africa. The platform claims to serve approximately 350,000 merchants and indicates that it has onboarded nearly 20,000 merchants in Gulf countries since January 2025.
The company operates in Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Oman. The funds will be used to expand digital payment acceptance and launch new products aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises, said CEO Islam Shawky, who stated he is aiming for a reference platform for "agentic commerce," meaning transactions initiated by software agents.
What this means for African merchants
In Africa, the bulk of commerce is still conducted by very small businesses that have long been kept away from formal financial services due to a lack of terminals, banking history, or affordable fees. Payment platforms developed on the continent, from Kenya's M-Pesa to Nigerian and South African players, have shown that the solution rarely comes from the outside.
Paymob's trajectory also illustrates a dependency: funding rounds for African tech champions rely heavily on capital from the Gulf, Europe, and North America, which raises the question of long-term control over these infrastructures that have become strategic. The challenge for African markets is to ensure these funds are primarily used to lower the cost of payments for merchants on the continent, rather than solely financing expansion into more solvent markets.
This article was written in French with the help of artificial intelligence from the sources cited below, then translated from French automatically. Read the original.