عربي

Egypt payments startup Paymob signs deal with A15

Arabic

Egypt payments startup Paymob signs deal with A15

Egypt payments startup Paymob has signed an undisclosed deal with local financier A15.

The companies did not say how much the deal was worth nor how large a stake was sold, but A15 takes minority stakes of between 8-25 percent in the startups it makes direct investments in.

Paymob provides payment systems to banks and mobile operators, offering both online payment gateways and an app that allows for card-on-delivery payments.

It was founded in 2013 by Alain El Hajj, Islam Shawky and Mostafa Menessy. Clients include Jumia, Yashry.com and Cairo Sitters.

“We were also really impressed by the Paymob team’s ability to generate substantial growth with limited resources.” A15 CEO Fadi Antaki said in a statement.

He said Paymob was processing “millions of transactions and hundreds of millions of dollars per year”.

Paymob CEO Islam Shawky said in the statement they partnered with A15 to benefit from its experience in electronic payments with mobile operators.

Antaki said expected growth in Egypt’s ecommerce sector, which Paymob services, and the growth in card holder numbers in the country - 40 percent more credit cards and 36 percent from debit cards since 2010 - validated their investment in the startup.

After being spun out of tech holding company OT Ventures in October last year, A15 announced that it had set aside $3 million for new investments in regional early stage companies.

Antaki told Wamda in January that it wholly owned all of its portfolio companies (all of which were developed inside the compay) bar online ticketing startup E7gezly, in which it owned 51 percent. [However jobs site Wuzzuf was among several investments rather than wholly owned entities.]

Since then, A15 internal companies have merged with food delivery site Mumm and digital media agency Kijami.

It’s exited legacy businesses music site Mazika, sports news site YallaKora, news site Masrawy and online trading site Arab Finance, and food delivery site Otlob.

A15 itself is owned by Accelero Capital.

* This article has been updated to correct the size of A15's investment stakes, and clarify the investor's internally developed companies.

Thank you

Please check your email to confirm your subscription.