Egyptian fintech startup Dopay has secured $18 million in a Series A funding round led by UK VC firm Force Over Mass Capital, Dutch development bank FMO and NN Group. African investor Mbuyu Capital and Nordic fund Alder Tree Investments also participated in the round.

Dopay was founded in June 2014 to provide payroll services and prepaid cards for the unbanked to accelerate financial inclusion in Egypt. The firm’s customers include McDonalds, Swvl, Barclays-Egypt and Bank ABC, and last month received an agent banking license from the Central Bank of Egypt.

 The Series A funding round will enable dopay to develop its existing business in Egypt. Additionally, it will help the fintech startup build a range of financial services in addition to cashless payroll and prepaid cards for employees.

The dopay platform enables staff to be paid in real time, even during weekends and holidays. Each account provides a prepaid debit card, in partnership with Mastercard, enabling 24/7 access to funds via ATM withdrawal. Enrolled businesses benefit from a secure and cashless payroll, with simple-to-use interfaces and fully auditable transparency. Prepaid card users enjoy instant and secure access to banking facilities, no matter how much they earn. Dopay’s agent banking license, enabling the delivery of digital banking services and onboarding of employees and beneficiaries in seconds, puts dopay in a strong competitive position in Egypt’s salary payments space.

Wouter Volckaert, Chief Investment Officer, Force Over Mass Capital, said, “Egypt has around 2.4 million individual businesses and 104 million people, some 67% of whom do not have a bank account, while 94% have no access to credit. The dopay business model engages with business owners in the first instance, meaning they don’t have to attract individual customers. Each company signing up with dopay brings an entire workforce in a single transaction, and this is a very strong growth driver. Their new platform provides frictionless onboarding for employees, while enabling dopay to scale their business at pace.”

Frans van Eersel, Founder and CEO of dopay, said, “The value of our Series A funding confirms the investment community’s confidence in the dopay offer. Our commercial validity through our B2B2C model is clear, and our technology capability is proven and strong. Egypt is the biggest market in the MENA region. We will serve a rapidly growing number of Egyptian businesses, from SMEs to major corporations, and their employees. Our dopay leadership is world class, with successful creators of billion-dollar payments businesses on the Board. We are ready to aggressively grow our solutions, leveraging up- and cross-selling opportunities, as we increase dopay’s range of services and partners across MENA.”

Egyptian Fintech startups are raising a great deal of funding this month. MNT-Halan landed $120 million in financing only last week, in one of the largest fintech rounds in the region. Meanwhile, B2B e-commerce startup and digital lender Capiter this week announced a $33 million Series A round while Fintech and microloan solutions provider Kashat also announced a $1.75 million bridge round earlier this week.