On 22 September 2026 MENA payments operator Paymob announced the close of a $35 million pre-Series C round. The round is co-led by sovereign investor Mubadala Investment Company (Abu Dhabi, via UAE Diversified Assets) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). British DFI British International Investment, Dubai's Global Ventures and DPI Ventures also participated. Proceeds will scale SME merchant acceptance across the region, fund working capital products for SMEs and — unusually for a payments player — pay for infrastructure to support 'agentic commerce', payments initiated by autonomous AI agents.
Deal structure
The round is structured as equity pre-Series C. The parties have not disclosed a valuation. Key parameters:
- Amount: $35 million.
- Co-leads: Mubadala Investment Company (UAE Diversified Assets, UAE Investments Platform) and EBRD.
- Participants: British International Investment (BII), Global Ventures, DPI Ventures.
- Existing investors: PayPal Ventures, Kora Capital, Clay Point Capital, FMO, A15, Helios Digital Ventures.
- Cumulative funding: more than $125 million — a $50 million Series B in 2022, a $22 million Series B extension led by EBRD in 2024 and now the $35 million pre-Series C.
Islam Shawky, Paymob's co-founder and CEO, said the company had 'morphed into a regional platform over the past 18 months, propelled by the exponential growth of our GCC business', and that the round will help 'accelerate our growth plan across the MENA region and fast-track our product roadmap to become the go-to payments platform for agentic commerce'.
Why this is a UAE bet, not an Egyptian one
Paymob was founded in Cairo in 2015 (co-founders Islam Shawky, Alain El Hajj and Mostafa Menessy), and on paper its headquarters remain Egyptian. Economically, however, the centre of gravity has shifted to the GCC — and the round formalises the shift.
The key fact: in January 2025 Paymob secured a Retail Payment Services Licence from the Central Bank of the UAE. That is not an in-principle approval but a full operational licence under the CBUAE payments framework. In the 18 months since, the company has onboarded roughly 20,000 merchants across three active GCC markets (the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman) and grown GCC revenue sevenfold. Group revenue tripled over the same period, and GCC now accounts for 'close to half' of consolidated revenue, in the company's own wording.
Mubadala's entry through UAE Diversified Assets fits Abu Dhabi's playbook — the sovereign fund has been backing fintech infrastructure that reinforces the UAE's status as the regional hub. Ali Eid Al Mheiri, Executive Director for UAE Diversified Assets at Mubadala's UAE Investments Platform, framed the round in exactly that logic: 'Paymob's expansion in the UAE aligns closely with our ambition under our MENA Venture Capital Fund, to support companies that strengthen the country's digital economy and reinforce its position as a leading regional fintech hub.' For fintech founders weighing where to structure UAE operations, our guide Free zone or mainland in the UAE: how to choose a business jurisdiction in 2026 unpacks the decision.
Agentic commerce: what it is, and why a payments player is building for it
'Agentic commerce' is a relatively new label with a concrete mechanic underneath. It is the scenario in which a purchase is initiated and executed on the user's behalf by an autonomous AI agent — for example, an assistant renews a subscription, replenishes supplies, pays a vendor invoice or settles a SaaS bill without the user tapping 'pay'.
From the payments-infrastructure side that is a distinct scenario, not a subset of the ordinary online payment. Today's rails are optimised for human-initiated flows: browser checkout, 3-D Secure, behavioural fraud scoring. A machine agent does not fit natively — it must identify itself to the PSP, prove delegated authority, respect limits and satisfy KYC/AML rules while surviving the anti-fraud engine. Hence the need for separate infrastructure: agent sub-account models, attestation mechanics, specialised APIs layered over standard acquiring flows.
Paymob's claim on the 'go-to payments platform for agentic commerce' is a bet that within two to three years a meaningful share of MENA purchases will be agent-initiated — first in SME segments (small merchants automating procurement and subscriptions) and B2B (procurement inside ERP-driven agents). Whoever builds the rails early captures share that is hard to reclaim later.
What it shifts for UAE SME merchants
Three practical effects for local merchants and startups.
First — sharper PSP competition. Paymob now has capital to actively pull merchants from adjacent segments, and every CBUAE-licensed player will feel the pressure — from local Ziina and Careem Pay to international Stripe/Checkout.com and regional Network International. For merchants that translates into more aggressive pricing and faster integration timelines. Practical takeaway: when picking a PSP for 2026–2027, keep Paymob on the shortlist alongside local players.
Second — credit products on top of payments data. The announced SME working capital line moves Paymob out of pure acquiring into a lending layer built on its own transaction data. For many UAE merchants without a long local banking history, that is an alternative to the classical bank overdraft (which is hard to secure without 12–24 months of local track record). Similar models have already been road-tested by Stripe Capital and Shopify Capital in other regions.
Third — rails built for automation. Businesses whose model rests on automation (marketplaces with subscribed checkout, agentic ERP, embedded subscriptions) gain a potential technology partner rather than a bare processor. There are no publicly declared 'agentic-ready' integrations in the UAE market today — Paymob will be among the first to state that focus explicitly. For payment-rail context we recommend our overview Jaywan — the UAE's national payment card.
What to watch next
Points worth tracking: (1) the official launch of SME working capital products and the first disclosed origination volumes; (2) the first agentic-payments reference cases — which SaaS platforms and ERPs Paymob will integrate with first; (3) subsequent rounds — a pre-Series C typically precedes a full Series C by 12–18 months, and the identity of that round's leaders will signal how ready global funds are for MENA fintech; (4) signals from the CBUAE — Paymob's active UAE work will highlight how the regulator treats licensed PSPs operating under agentic scenarios, where the existing rulebook has yet to hard-code answers.
