How Egyptian Paymob is Improving the Cashless Behaviour of Africans
Paymob is an infrastructure technology enabler that provides payment solutions for different business sizes. The startup’s drive is to empower digital financial service providers through mobile wallet technology. Islam Shawky, Alain El Hajj, and Mostafa Menessy founded Paymob in 2015.
The idea of Paymob’s service is to enable users pay for products by swiping a smartphone. This is possible via a Near-Field Communications (NFC), a short-range wireless technology. This service will eventually supplant the actual billfold or wallet.
With billions of people using smartphones acting as motivators for shops and customers to adopt mobile payments, there’s a big world of mobile payment lunacy out there waiting to be milked. NFC technology is now available on almost all mobile phones, and more and more merchants are incorporating it into their POS systems. Along with these advances, mobile POS sales are becoming more common.
Paymob’s impact in Africa in its years of existence has been swift. The startup has raised over $60m in funding and has been able to expand its payment services in the MENA region.
Paymob is an important part of the Central Bank of Egypt’s digital financial transformation programs. It is among the startups expected to revolutionize Egypt’s financial inclusion environment in the near future. Paymob has partnered with prominent banks, telecom operators, schemes, and other leading financial organizations during the course of its operations to help push the ecosystem ahead.
How the Startup Operates
Paymob’s payment infrastructure technology enabler empowers digital financial service providers. The startup leverages revolutionary mobile wallet technology that allows the institute’s clients to access finance and make digital payments. Paymob adopts payment links feature which allows merchants to exchange links with their consumers in order to receive payments made with mobile wallets. According to the startup, its infrastructure processes 85% of all mobile wallet transactions in Egypt. It also claims to be the country’s largest payment facilitator.
Paymob’s launch of Tap-on-Phone contactless payments in collaboration with Mastercard bolstered its strategy to reach more users. By downloading a Paymob-powered app, these retailers may turn their NFC-enabled cellphones –personal or commercial– into a POS, leveraging contactless payments technology.
Obtaining a point-of-sale equipment and its supporting hardware can be too expensive for micro and small businesses. It will be difficult to expand because they will need to process enormous volumes over a long period of time to repay that cost.
The POS device from Paymob is the newest in Android technology, improving the consumer experience with smart and powerful touch screen gadgets that use simpler checkout techniques including hand-keying, swiping, and dipping. Paymob’s smart checkout process also detects customer issuer card bank and offers them relevant installment program accordingly.
What’s next for Paymob?
Paymob expanded its operations into Pakistan last year. The startup aims to empower Pakistani merchants with online, POS and “Tap on Phone” payment solutions. With a population of over 220 million, with a range of retail outlets and SME businesses across its cities, Paymob believes the market opportunity in Pakistan is significant.
According to a statement, Paymob plans to add 100,000 merchants within the next two years from the South Asian country, home to over 4 million SMEs. Having raised $50 million in Series B funding this month, Paymob will be looking to strengthen its hold in Egypt, Kenya, Pakistan and Palestine.
Islam Shawky the co-founder and CEO of Paymob sees the startup’s contactless payments technology as a game changer. He mentioned that the tech is expanding Paymob’s market and allows them develop significantly. He also stated that the product, which will be given out to new merchants as a supplement to traditional point-of-sale systems, will allow Paymob to keep ahead of competitors like Fawry and PayTabs.