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Paymob, Founded by Three College Friends, Earns Another $22 Million, Is Profitable in Egypt

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Paymob, started by three college friends, lands another $22 million and is profitable in Egypt

Few ecosystems outside of Silicon Valley can boast successful tech startups founded by founders who were still in school or who recently dropped out of faculty, so when these events occur in regions just like the Middle East or Africa, it’s value listening to these firms.

A decade ago, Islam Shawky, Alaina El HajjAND Mostafa Menessythree students from the American University in Cairo, launched an e-commerce platform in Egypt. At the time, e-commerce was a booming industry, with only 2% of households in the country participating in it. One of the major reasons was the shortage of online payment methods.

“There was a gap between what banks were offering and the requirements of new business models from financial technology. No one was doing digital payments for e-commerce and digital startups,” Shawky said in Interview 2022.

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Integrating the local banks’ payment gateway with the e-commerce platform was a pain, so Shawky and his friends launched Cry as a payment infrastructure for digital wallets in 2015 while still in college. What began as a small enterprise quickly grew into an omni-channel gateway offering over 50 payment methods, including wallets, cards, buy now, pay later (BNPL), and QR code payments, enabling over 350,000 merchants in five countries in the Middle East and North Africa to just accept online and offline payments.

To date, Paymob, which describes itself as a financial services enabler, has raised greater than $90 million to scale thus far, including a recently closed $22 million Series B round led by EBRD Venture Capital. This brings its total Series B funding to $72 million.

Cross-selling services for a growing seller base

When we last covered Paymob in 2022, the fintech was serving just over 100,000 local and international merchants, a number that had greater than tripled in two years after expanding from Egypt and Pakistan to Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

Paymob’s initial $50 million Series B round in 2022, co-led by PayPal Ventures, which participated in the expansion round, spurred that expansion. During that point, the fintech also beefed up its product suite, CEO Shawky told TechCrunch. It launched an app for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and introduced payment methods like embedded checkout experiences and products like loans and advanced settlements.

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“We help merchants accept, pay, manage and grow, those are the four divisions we have. Acceptance is the engine and the core business, and we sell everything around that,” Shawky explains. “Once merchants are onboarded, we help them accept digital transactions, and then step by step we help with payments, provide working capital and give them the tools to better manage their finances and their business.”

Paymob became profitable for the primary time in Egypt in the second quarter of this 12 months, where its revenue has increased six-fold since mid-2022. It stays unprofitable elsewhere.

Increasing the variety of merchants and increasing average revenue per merchant by cross-selling additional services has been a giant a part of the startup’s success. For example, if a Paymob customer only has a POS terminal that accepts cards, that only accounts for 10-15% of their business. By offering a collection of products through partnerships with Shopify and Tabby, Paymob’s margins have improved significantly. Doing this at scale, digitally, and without the necessity for an enormous sales force has likely fueled the startup’s effective growth (Paymob has just over 1,000 employees).

“What’s most gratifying for us is that we’ve been able to grow profitably, because over the last two years, a lot of people have said we have to stop growing to be profitable or to preserve our runway,” Shawky noted. “But we’ve shown that if you build a fundamentally sound business and you really address customer needs, you can scale quickly and still be profitable.”

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Rapid adoption of online payments in the UAE

Indeed, in Egypt and the Gulf countries there’s a dynamic growth in the recognition of digital payments.

In Egypt, 88% of consumers have used not less than one recent payment method in the past 12 months, and 85% of SMEs recognize that accepting multi-channel digital payments is vital to their growth, in response to Mastercard. Meanwhile, in the United Arab Emirates, demand for digital payment methods is more pronounced, with around 77% adoption nationwide.

Based on conversations with founders, it’s clear that despite such strong demand, the market stays underserved. As such, fintech firms which have expanded into the UAE, reminiscent of Paymob and native players like Ziina, which we wrote about last week, are racing to fill the gap by offering tailored solutions to half 1,000,000 merchants, capitalizing on the country’s growing appetite for digital payments.

As an illustration of this explosion in demand, Paymob only offers a web based payment acceptance product in the UAE, yet in just 14 months, its transaction volume in the UAE has grown to the dimensions of Egypt’s entire business, which took five years to construct. Reasons for this rapid growth in the Middle Eastern country include higher purchasing power, currency strength, and a greater share of digital wallets versus money.

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Nevertheless, Egypt stays its largest market. Shawky is confident that a collection of fintech products geared toward promoting a cashless society, combined with efforts by the federal government and the central bank, will help Egypt achieve the identical level of digital payments adoption seen in the UAE.

“Issuance and acceptance need to go hand in hand for Egypt’s economy to reach this turning point. The central bank is putting a lot of effort and investment into the country’s digital infrastructure,” the CEO noted. “We are seeing the results. Our business has grown six-fold in two years and four months; yes, we have increased our merchant base, but it is also because these merchants are processing more digital volumes.”

Paymob reported $5 billion in total payments in 2020 and facilitated greater than 120 million transactions that 12 months. However, the present numbers for each metrics remain unclear because the fintech has not disclosed updated numbers.

In addition to PayPal Ventures, the fintech’s Series B funding round included Endeavor Catalyst, in addition to existing investors: British International Investment (BII), FMO, A15, Nclude, and Helios Digital Ventures (HDV).

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This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com

Technology

Fanbase of the Isaac Hayes III social application over USD 5.2 million, gains traction when Tiktok Ban is approaching

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Isaac Hayes, Karen, gated cmmunity


As the Tiktok Ban, the social application of Isaac Hayes III, Fanbase, has approached, gained adhesion from over $ 5.2 million secured by social financing.

Hayes, son of the legendary R&B singer, Isaac Hayes, founded the social media platform in 2018. According to the website, the creators can earn Revenues through their content. In addition, users can get money because of the interactions in the application. The platform, although free, also has levels of subscription to go further with monetization.

“For people who value content and community, fanbase is a free, free new generation social network that allows each user to earn money from the first day,” explains the company’s website.

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Although it has been available for years, the application is gaining latest popularity, because TiTOK time ends in the United States. The platform based in Atlanta also increased on the App Store charts. Fanbase has recently won a spot for six social media rankings and 16 in the general downloads of the App Store. In this manner he also exceeded 5 million milestones in social financing.

Hayes wrote about reaching LinkedIn in the post.

Hayes not only wants society to hitch the application, but participate in its development as investors. According to Afrotech, users It can occur Investors for a minimum amount of USD 399 per black start-up.

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He hopes that he’ll turn out to be one other dominant social application on the market, which allows every user to find a way to make a profit.

“I am the only recognized black application for social media, which exists currently founded on the entire planet, but is owned by infrastructure and property,” said Hayes Podcast “Black Tech Green Money”.

“Instead of being clients of our creations, we transform our innovations into acquisitions, and therefore this is my pitch to tell people:” Look. Facebook and Instagram is not going to be, and Tiktok is not going to be the king of the hill. There is no activity that lasted and dominated constant. Everything is falling. “

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(Tattranslate) Social media

This article was originally published on : www.blackenterprise.com
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Ex warehouse worker earns 132,000 USD without a bachelor’s degree

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WAREHOUSE WORKER, SALARY,

The 33-year-old Scrum champion reveals his journey to success.


Meet Shanelle Gibson, 33-year-old Scrum champion, who now earns $ 132,000 per year-just a decade after the work of 12-hour warehouse changes for just USD 15 per hour-and-board of the diploma.

“Regardless of whether you succeed in college or not, it does not specify who you are as a person”, he said CNBC will make him as a part of the abandonment of a series of steps.

“You can read books and take camps for online; There are so many ways to improve your skills. Whatever you want to do, if you have the right attitude and you put your job, you will achieve it. “

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It all began in 2015, when the 23 -year -old Gibson had a revelation when putting clothes within the warehouse. She realized that her current work was not a profession path she had imagined.

Gibson watched his friends graduated and introduced high careers. At the identical time, she navigated her own path after leaving Valdost State University in Georgia to avoid combating student loans’ debt.

“I just had the” moment Aha “in which I looked around these mountains of boxes and tired people working with me and I thought:” I should not be here; I feel that I’m intended for the proven fact that it’s greater than this minimum wage. I’m not joyful – Gibson remembered. “It prompted me to quit smoking and I just started to apply everywhere.”

Definitely to make a change, Gibson sent her CV to Craigslist, through which the Recruitment Manager at ParkingSoft, Startup of Parking Management Software, noticed her request and invited her to conduct an interview on the role of a telephone dispatcher on the office in Atlanta. After securing the work, Gibson quickly impressed her team and was promoted inside a few weeks to a customer support analyst due to her initiative in solving clients’ problems, and never simply transferring connections to the service team.

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Experience, along together with her earlier work in retail trade, all supported in Gibson’s passage to master work.

“This work started my technological career,” she said. “All technical skills I have learned to do this work – from SQL [a programming language] to Jira [project tracking software] He made me a more confident, competitive candidate for higher paid technological work, even without a diploma. “

After servicing several roles of customer support, Gibson was increasingly frustrated by the monotony of labor. A friend suggested that she discover that she became a Scrum master. After further review, Gibson decided to participate in a two -day course of USD 400 at Scrum Alliance.

According to Courser, Master Scrum is “the use of agile project Management to the master Project, teams and team members. Because Scrum Masters can work in many settings, your tasks and responsibilities may differ. Depending on where you work, you can deal with the role of a facilitator, trainer or project manager. ”

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Shortly after obtaining the certificate, Gibson secured her first position of Scrum champion in Unitedhealthare. In 2022, she developed her profession, joining her current company because the important master of Scrum, winning an annual salary of over 100,000 USD.

“I knew that I was talented and busy, but society tells us that you need a higher degree to find a high paid job,” she said. “The blow to this milestone helped me understand that there is no special formula to get six characters; It depends on you how hard you want to work on this goal and not allow you to limit you a kind of requirements. “


This article was originally published on : www.blackenterprise.com
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Macron will present an investment package worth USD 112 billion, France’s response to Stargate Stargate

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French President Emmanuel Macron answers questions of French Journalist Laurent Delahousse and Indian Journalist Palki Sharma Upadhyay during a televised interview broadcasted on TV channel France 2 and in India on the eve of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Summit, at the Grand Palais, in Paris, on February 9, 2025.

At the tip of the local time of local time, the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, announced a complete of EUR 109 billion in private investments within the AI ​​ecosystem – or about $ 112 billion at current exchange rates. This week, Paris hosts the Summit of Artificial Intelligence Action – the third international peak focused on AI after previous events in Bletchley Park, Great Britain and Seoul in South Korea.

“I can say that Europe will accelerate tonight, France will accelerate,” said Macron in an interview with France 2 and the primary post of India, raising EUR 109 billion investments in artificial intelligence, which he said that he could be deployed “in the next few years “.

He added that a pot of cash is represented by “exactly the equivalent of France of what the United States announced from Stargate – $ 500 billion – is the same indicator.” (With 68 million inhabitants France has 5 x fewer people than the USA)

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TechCrunch began counting all investment guarantees from foreign and native players who’ve been entering the previous couple of days. From EUR 30 billion to EUR 50 billion from the United Arab Emirates (and MGX), EUR 20 billion from the Canadian investment company Brookfield, EUR 10 billion from BPIFRANCE and EUR 3 billion from the French Telecommunications Company Iliad, we achieved a complete of up to 83 billion EUR (USD 85 billion) from Sunday.

Several corporations haven’t yet announced their plans. During the interview, Macron mentioned Orange and Thales as other investors in this system.

Most investments will be allocated to latest data -oriented data centers. Hence the comparison with Stargate.

Macron also discussed the French AI startups, which moved their headquarters to the USA, corresponding to Mistral, Owkin and Wandercraft. He said that he believes that Europe remains to be competitive when it comes to the beginning of artificial intelligence – even suggesting that Deepseek is an opportunity to catch up.

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“There was a race to increase the scale. Everyone thought you always had to be bigger and stronger. What did Deepseek do with his open models? They took all available innovations from the latest OPENAI model and adapted them to their own model, using a more economical approach, “he said. “Everyone will continue to do it. And that’s why you have to be in this race. “

Mistral Data Center project

Arthur Mensch, co -founder and general director of Mistral, also announced plans to invest billions within the AI ​​cluster. The Paris company might be the one European company working on foundation models that may compete with models corresponding to Alibaba, Anthropic, Deepseek, Meta, OpenAi and others.

“We will do something and invest a few billion euros in a cluster that will be created in Essonne so that we can train even more efficient systems in a few months,” said Mensch on the French TV1 TF1.

The commercial may very well be seen as one other response to the Stargate project, an investment program worth $ 500 billion run by OpenAI and Softbank to construct many data centers for AI within the United States.

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Reminding that almost all of the French electricity production comes from nuclear power plants. France also produces more electricity than it uses.

Because technology corporations have a look at latest locations of hungry power centers-ideally driven by electricity without coal-francity can introduce itself as an ideal location in Europe for these projects.

“In France we have an extraordinary advantage. We produce one of the most decarbonized, controlled and safe electricity in the world, “said Macron, adding:” We have the safest and most stable network. And we export this low -emission electricity. “

According to the French president, the country exported 90TWh of electricity to neighboring countries in 2024. France is now planning to use this law to attract foreign investment.

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(Tagstranslate) France

This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com
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