• Mastercard and MaxAB, one of Egypt’s fastest-growing B2B marketplaces, join forces to advance digitization and financial inclusion in Egypt. 

•As part of Mastercard’s global strategy, the collaboration focuses on bringing 50 million MSMEs into the digital economy by 2025.

•MaxAB Payments, introduced in 2021, is a fintech service enabling local merchants to accept payments for various services. 

Mastercard and MaxAB, Egypt’s growing business-to-business (Mastercard) marketplaces, announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) at the EDGE 2023 forum in Dubai, according to an official statement.

Mastercard, a global technology company in the payments industry, and MaxAB, one of Egypt’s fastest-growing business-to-business (B2B) marketplaces catering to the wholesale food and grocery industry, partnered to advance digitization and financial inclusion in the country. 

The agreement aligns with Mastercard’s global strategy to bring 50 million MSMEs worldwide into the digital economy by 2025 and the recently reached milestone of providing 25 million women entrepreneurs with digital solutions that can help grow their businesses. 

In July 2021, the startup secured its total Series A fundraise to $55 million.

“In today’s digital world, B2B marketplaces must fulfill varying needs along the value chain and focus on sustaining growth while providing the best-in-class experience for businesses and consumers alike. Our partnership with MaxAB will further drive contactless acceptance solutions across the network and enable businesses to further expand and grow,” said Gaurang Shah, EVP, Products & Engineering, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa, Mastercard. 

The collaboration will equip MaxAB’s network of 100,000 micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) with innovative digital payment solutions, which will enable businesses to accept contactless payments from end consumers. 

Leveraging the tech-savvy nature of MaxAB’s merchants, Mastercard’s acceptance solutions will not only digitize the end-to-end process, but will further expand the platform’s reach into a wider base of MSMEs while eliminating cash handling, limiting reconciliation problems, mitigating fraud, and empowering merchants to grow their business. 

“Through our partnership with Mastercard, we will introduce innovative financial services to our merchants, allowing them to seamlessly automate and digitize their payment cycles. Mastercard’s solutions will help us reduce manual operational processes and achieve scale at a much faster pace,” said Belal El-Megharbel, CEO, of MaxAB.

MaxAB was established in 2018 as an E-commerce platform allowing local underserved merchants and mom-and-pop shops in Egypt and Morocco to grow, increase their revenues, and enhance their own quality of life. MaxAB strives to empower retailers who want to maximize their revenues. In addition to its e-commerce services, MaxAB introduced MaxAB Payments in 2021.

MaxAB Payments is a fintech service that enables local merchants to accept payments for various services that their end customers may require. 

This feature allows retailers to offer a more comprehensive shopping experience to their customers by facilitating secure and convenient payment transactions.“In today’s digital world, B2B marketplaces must fulfill varying needs along the value chain and focus on sustaining growth while providing the best-in-class experience for businesses and consumers alike.