The Egyptian digital payment provider Paymob announced that it has raised $3.5 million investment. The round was led by Global Ventures and the Dutch Entrepreneurial Development Bank FMO with a follow-on investment by A15.

Paymob is an infrastructure technology enabler providing payment solutions to empower digital financial service providers across Africa and the Middle East. Islam Shawky, Alain El Hajj and Mostafa El Menessy founded Paymob in 2013. Its aim is to contribute to the financial inclusion movement while targeting economic growth. In order to do this, it is facilitating payment transactions for merchants. Consequently, merchants can grow their business using multiple digital payment methods such as online payments, mobile wallets, installments and more.

Paymob will be using the proceeds to further expand its merchants’ network to meet the continuously rising demand, product development. Beyond the Egyptian borders, Paymob will accelerate its regional expansion, extending its products to more markets in East Africa and the GCC, El-Hajj told WAYA.

Alain El-Hajj, Paymob’s Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer said: “Paymob’s merchants and partners will benefit directly from this funding round as Paymob will ramp up investments in its core payments offering to better serve our existing base and better cater for the increasing demand. Empowering our merchants and partners networks in Egypt and Africa has and will always be at the heart and core of what we do at Paymob.”

Paymob’s mobile wallets infrastructure processes more than 85% of the market share of the transactions throughout in the Egyptian market. The service is being used in five different markets including Kenya, Pakistan and Palestine. Thus, marking its position as the first Egyptian fintech to expand beyond the local market. Moreover, Paymob is continuously investing in its infrastructure to cater for the digitization of the payment ecosystem for its thousands of local and global merchants. These include SWVL, ElGouna, Tradeline, Befit, Gourmet and Metro market.

Islam Shawky, Paymob’s Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer said: “These unprecedented times has proven the need for a robust digital payments infrastructure to serve the rising demand from all business types and sizes during the pandemic which resulted in a drastic increase of 450% increase in merchant onboarding rate since the beginning of Covid-19.”

On raising investment during a pandemic, Al-Hajj told WAYA “I would assume we were one of the few lucky companies that have managed to sustain growth during these tough times. It was of course tough raising from international institutions during the travel lockdown and such, but our growth rate and the continuously increasing market demand has pulled things together.”

Karim Beshara , A15 Chairman, added: “Since our initial investment in Paymob, the team has made significant strides in addressing the major issue of financial inclusion in our region. It is rewarding to be involved in a business that facilitates the way people transact every day and maximizes the productivity of millions of people.”