Alveena Ahmad
Paymob, the Egypt-founded payments infrastructure company, has raised $35 million in a pre-Series C round co-led by Abu Dhabi sovereign investor Mubadala Investment Company and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). British International Investment, Global Ventures and DPI Ventures also joined the round, which was announced on September 21, 2026. The deal takes Paymob’s total disclosed funding past $125 million.
The headline figure is modest by fintech standards. The more telling numbers sit inside the company’s press release, published in full by Wamda, and they show where Paymob’s business now comes from.
The Gulf now pays half the bills
According to the release, Paymob’s consolidated revenue tripled across its four markets over the past 18 months. Over the same period, revenue from the Gulf grew sevenfold, and close to half of the company’s total revenue now comes from GCC markets. Wamda lists those markets as Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Oman, with more than 390,000 merchants served.
Much of that Gulf growth followed a licence. Paymob received a Retail Payment Services Licence from the Central Bank of the UAE in January 2025 and says it has onboarded roughly 20,000 merchants across its three GCC markets since then. Earlier rounds included a $50 million Series B in 2022 and a $22 million Series B extension led by EBRD in 2024, according to Wamda.
The money will go into scaling Paymob’s core payment acceptance business across the Middle East and North Africa, new products for small and mid-sized merchants, and tools for agentic commerce. CEO Islam Shawky said the aim is to become “the go-to payments platform for agentic commerce.”
A fragmented market, and the work it creates
The release describes the problem Paymob sells against. Merchants in the region typically need seven to eight payment methods, spread across buy-now-pay-later providers, local card networks and bank instalment plans, each with its own integration, negotiation and settlement cycle. Paymob’s pitch is one contract, one API and one dashboard covering more than 60 payment methods.
For Pakistani developers and freelancers who build stores and apps for Gulf clients, that fragmentation is the job. A UAE or Saudi retailer launching a WooCommerce, Shopify or custom checkout needs someone who can wire up a payment gateway, test instalment and wallet flows, and reconcile settlements when they do not match the order log. Payment integration is a narrow, well-paid specialism, and a funded regional player expanding its merchant base means more merchants going through exactly that setup. Readers pitching for Gulf work can find more on winning those contracts in beingguru’s guide to high-paying GCC freelance projects and tenders.
Pakistan is missing from the 2026 map
Paymob has a Pakistan history. The company announced its expansion into Pakistan in April 2022, pitching online, POS and “Tap on Phone” payments to local merchants. At the time it pointed to the country’s freelancers as one underserved group, noting they had too few local digital payment options.
The September 2026 announcement does not mention Pakistan. It refers to four markets, and every market it names is in Egypt or the Gulf. Paymob did not address its Pakistan operations in the release, and beingguru could not confirm their current status from public sources. For Pakistani merchants weighing payment providers, it is worth asking any gateway directly which markets it actively supports before building around it.
Mubadala’s involvement also signals how Abu Dhabi sees the category. Its executive Ali Eid Al Mheiri framed the investment as support for companies that strengthen the UAE’s digital economy and its position as a regional fintech hub. With a sovereign fund and a development bank on the cap table, Paymob is now positioned as Gulf infrastructure rather than an Egyptian startup with regional offices, and its product roadmap is likely to follow the markets that now produce half its revenue.
