In today’s episode of the ‘Start-up of the Week‘, International Finance will talk about Cairo-based omnichannel payments platform Paymob, which delivers innovative fintech solutions to customers in Egypt, Jordan, Kenya, Pakistan and the UAE.
The platform, as of November 2023, through its 40 payment methods, takes care of millions of transactions worth billions of dollars for more than 170,000 SME (Small and Medium Enterprises) businesses, apart from serving big brands like IKEA Egypt, Vodafone, Tabby and Uber.
Paymob currently has 16.5 million registered users. It is now planning to reach a million SMEs in the next few years. The start-up has secured a total funding of USD 68.5 million.
Making Waves In A Short Time
Established in 2015, Paymob now oversees millions of online transactions for MENAP (Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan) businesses. Paymob is also playing a vital role in the digital financial transformation initiatives backed by the Central Bank of Egypt.
Paymob envisions its innovative mobile wallet technology to empower MENAP’s fintech space and realise the region’s ‘Cashless Society’ dream.
Among Paymob’s key products, ‘Online Payment’ helps client businesses tailor their suitable payment methods and seamlessly integrate them on various online platforms. Using this solution, the client ventures can offer their customers flexible payment options.
The ventures can also control their billing cycles, automate recurring payments and scale their SaaS (Software as a Service) businesses. The product also comes with an inbuilt dashboard to monitor and payment tracking facilities. The dashboard also generates detailed reports and insights.
Credit and debit cards, mobile wallets, cash on delivery, loyalty points redemptions, payment links and kiosk payments, all are compatible with Paymob’s ‘Online Payment’.
While this particular solution is tailor-made for e-commerce businesses, it is even powering Nestle Egypt’s ground-breaking recycling initiative, where the project participants from the country’s informal waste sector are directly receiving their monthly salaries through mobile payments.
Through ‘Paymob Checkout’, client ventures can use a single code to enable all the possible payment methods in their e-commerce websites.
The solution comes with a 50% higher payment acceptance ratio, through 20-plus local and international methods.
While it is integration-friendly for standalone e-commerce sites with ‘One-Click Account Creation’ and ‘Dynamic Dashboard’ features, it scores highly on the fraud prevention front, by saving payment information with every transaction.
More Tailored Products
Paymob’s ‘POS Solutions’ makes in-store payments look easy, as its smart point of sale (POS) device helps customers to pay with multiple secured payment methods.
It enables businesses to add more POS payment methods and widen their revenue potential by allowing customers the choice to use card payments, cash payments, digital wallets or even instalments. The solution also lessens the chances of cash flow delays by handing the businesses their money right away.
The POS device also improves customer experience with smart and powerful touchscreen devices, while integrating elements like simplified checkout processes such as hand-keying, swiping and dipping transactions.
The customers can even pay by tapping their card on the instrument using NFC technology, rather than inserting cards and entering PIN numbers.
Paymob also has a product called ‘Payment Link’, where businesses lacking websites can still accept payments through links via WhatsApp, social media platforms, or any of their preferred communication tools.
This solution is perfectly tailored for small businesses with no website and POS devices, apart from event organisers, who can sell tickets and receive reserve confirmation through ‘Payment Links’.
Paymob, through its ‘Subscriptions’, is also helping its client businesses to control their billing cycle and convert the customers into loyal subscribers. The solution uses the tokenization pathway (where customers get securely saved on Paymob’s gateway) to enable monthly recurring payments. The customers need to submit their payment information only once if they want to use the recurring payment method.
Through Paymob ‘Installments’, businesses can increase their profits by offering flexible payment options to their customers, irrespective of whether the latter is banked/unbanked. The smart checkout process under the solution detects the customer’s payment card issuer and offers him/her the relevant instalment programme. This instalment programme comes with zero-interest offers, different tenure options and instant loan approvals. From card transfers to digital wallets, customers can pay their instalments through a wide array of payment methods.
Paymob’s ‘Marketplace’ helps businesses to accept payments and distribute payouts automatically, while offering shoppers a consistent and unified experience through their digital journey with a single automated seamless payment engine.
Whether the client venture is an e-commerce marketplace, a booking/ticketing platform or any other complex online platform, ‘MarketPlace’ has been built to accommodate business models of all scales while providing businesses with tailored payout tools.
Expanding The Branches Further
In March 2023, Paymob partnered with Shahid, an Arabic streaming platform. Shahid customers in Egypt can now pay their subscriptions via digital wallets processed through Paymob’s infrastructure. Shahid now becomes the first and only subscription video on demand (SVOD) service to offer its subscribers e-wallet payment options.
Two months later, Paymob secured Saudi Arabia’s ‘Payment Technical Services Provider’ certification, using which it can expand its services to the Kingdom’s merchants.
In September, Paymob and Egypt’s cybersecurity start-up Buguard announced their partnership. Buguard’s cutting-edge Dark Web Monitoring platform, ‘Dark Atlas’, now protects Paymob against potential data breaches, as the tool scans for compromised data and emerging threats. In the event of a data leak, ‘Dark Atlas’ alerts Paymob, following which compromised credentials get instantly rotated to prevent unauthorised access.