Paymob raises $35 million pre-Series C led by Mubadala and EBRD

Paymob, the Egyptian payments infrastructure company, announced a pre-Series C financing round of $35 million, jointly led by Mubadala Investment Company (based in Abu Dhabi) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), with participation from British International Investment (BII), Global Ventures and DPI Ventures. The round brings the company’s disclosed funding to more than $125 million, following a $50 million Series B round in 2022 and a $22 million Series B extension led by the EBRD in 2024.

Unified platform for fragmented markets

Paymob was founded in 2015 by Islam Shawki, Alan Al-Haj and Mustafa Mansi, and provides a multi-channel payments platform that enables companies to accept electronic and cash payments and access more than 60 payment methods through a single technology layer. The platform currently serves over 390,000 merchants in Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Oman. According to the statement, the company will use the new capital to expand digital payments acceptance across the MENA region and to develop new products for small- and medium-size enterprise merchants and for agentic commerce.

Accelerating financial performance in the Gulf

The statement reveals that unified revenue grew three-fold over the past 18 months across the four markets, while Gulf-region revenue grew seven-fold, now accounting for roughly half of total revenue. Since the company obtained a retail payments services licence from the Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE) in January 2025, about 20,000 merchants have joined the platform across the three Gulf markets.

Islam Shawki, co-founder and CEO, said: “Paymob has become a regional platform over the past 18 months, driven by the rapid growth of our Gulf operations. The pre-Series C round will help us accelerate our growth plan across MENA and speed up the product roadmap to become the preferred platform for agentic commerce. We are excited about Mubadala joining the shareholder roster and grateful for the support of existing investors.”

On Mubadala’s side, Ali Eid Al-Mahiri, Chief Executive of Diversified Assets at Emirates Investment Platform, said: “Paymob’s expansion in the UAE aligns with our ambition under the MENA venture capital fund to support companies that strengthen the country’s digital economy and cement its position as a regional fintech hub. With a scalable payments platform and strong growth potential across the Gulf, Paymob is well positioned to serve merchants, enhance financial inclusion and contribute to economic diversification.”

Bruno Lozic, growth investor and venture capitalist at the EBRD, added: “Paymob has built the payments infrastructure that the small- and medium-size enterprise economy in MENA lacks, a single scalable layer that removes friction for merchants and unlocks growth in markets that have historically suffered from a shortage of digital financial services. These investments reflect the EBRD’s ongoing commitment to backing high-growth fintech champions. We are proud to support the next phase of Paymob’s expansion across the Gulf and beyond.”

Why this round matters to readers in the region

The round sends a dual signal: confidence from sovereign funds and major development institutions in a unified payments-infrastructure model, and an accelerating adoption of agentic commerce that requires a programmable, unified payments layer across fragmented markets. For founders and CFOs in the Gulf, Egypt and the Levant, this means a mature alternative for managing seven to eight separate payment integrations, each with its own settlement and negotiation cycle, through a single contract, a single API and a single dashboard. Moreover, Paymob’s receipt of a UAE central-bank licence and the onboarding of 20,000 Gulf merchants in a few weeks demonstrate that the UAE regulatory environment now enables rapid scaling for cross-border fintech firms.