A $50 million investment will help Egyptian digital payments company Paymob expand into new markets in both the Middle East and Africa. The round was led by Kora Capital, PayPal Ventures, and Clay Point, and represents the largest ever Series B round in Egyptian fintech history.
“Central Bank of Egypt initiatives that are continuously being introduced in the market to support fintech companies were key to Paymob’s growth,” company founder and CEO Islam Shawky said. “The Central Bank has created a regulatory framework to help fintech flourish and participate in making Egypt’s digital financial inclusion ambitions a reality.”
Processing more than 85% of the market share of transactions in Egypt with its mobile wallet technology, Paymob serves customers in five markets including Palestine, Pakistan, and Kenya. The investment comes as Paymob reports strong 2021 growth, including year-on-year growth in merchant partners and monthly volumes of 4x as of December. The company has onboarded more than 10,000 merchants in less than two years en route to a goal of onboarding one million SMEs.
This week’s funding brings Paymob’s total capital to more than $68.5 million.
South African bank Capitec announced that it was teaming up with two Finovate alums, Entersekt and nCino.
One of the fastest-growing digital banks in South Africa, Capitec has partnered with cloud banking and digital transformation solution provider nCino. The two companies will work together to build Capitec’s Business Banking loan management system to better serve the company 70,000+ business banking customers.
“Capitec has embraced an agile and innovative approach to growth,” nCino CEO Pierre Naudé said. “We’re glad Capitec saw a partner in nCino and look forward to providing the bank with industry-leading technology and a flexible platform that will help drive the sustainability and growth of its business banking operations.”
nCino made its Finovate debut in 2017 at FinovateEurope. The company’s flagship offering, its cloud-based Bank Operating System, provides a complete end-to-end banking solution that combines CRM, loan origination, workflow, ECM, business intelligence, and reporting all in a single location. nCino’s technology replaces disparate point solutions and manual processes with a modern, digitally-optimized experience.
In addition to its collaboration with nCino, Capitec also announced this week that it was working with South African identity and authentication solution provider Entersekt. Capitec will implement the company’s EMV 3D Secure solution to enhance the security of its e-commerce transactions.
The technology will enable Capitec to spot high risk e-commerce transactions in real-time, enhancing security without interfering with the customer experience. Entersekt’s EMV 3D Secure solution is pre-integrated with NuDetect from NuData Security – also a Finovate alum – which leverages behavioral biometrics and machine learning to help tell the difference between authentic users and potential fraudsters.
“We are constantly looking for ways to offer the best security possible without impacting our customers’ experiences,” Capitec Bank Marketing and Communications Executive Francois Viviers said. “By implementing Entersekt’s EMV 3D Secure solution with behavioral analytics from NuData Security, we are able to provide an additional level of protection for our e-commerce transactions. This also allows our team to continue to innovate, keeping our customers secure and Capitec at the forefront of digital banking innovation in South Africa.”
Entersekt demonstrated its technology as part of our developers conference, FinDEVr, in San Francisco in 2014. The company, headquartered in Cape Town, South Africa, finished 2021 with a “significant investment” from Accel-KKR. This spring, Entersekt announced partnerships with edtech Mindjoy and the MiDO Foundation to promote financial literacy, as well as a collaboration with credit union service organization (CUSO) Bonifii to bring context-aware authentication solutions to credit unions.
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
Central and Southern Asia
- FintechNewsSingapore looked at the insurtech industry in India.
- Oracle RS announces a pair of new core banking technology partners in Uzbekistan.
- India-based Allied Digital Services launched its AI-powered Conversational Banking platform, FinoAllied.
Latin America and the Caribbean
- Latin America-based fintech infrastructure Dock secured $110 million in growth funding, earning a valuation of over $1.5 billion.
- The Agri-Business Capital Fund (ABC Fund) completed a $3 million loan to Colombia’s Finamiga which provides microfinancing to small farmers.
- Brazilian fintech Nubank announced a partnership with blockchain infrastructure platform and USDP stablecoin issuer Paxos.
Asia-Pacific
- Philippines-based Netbank unveiled its Netizen Mobile Banking app.
- Vietnam’s Saigon-Hanoi Bank (SHB) partnered with Temenos to power its digital transformation.
- Indonesian financial services application platform Finku announced receiving $2.8 million in seed funding.
Sub-Saharan Africa
- South African mobile authentication innovator Entersekt forged a strategic partnership with Capitec Bank.
- African payments company Interswitch secured funding from LeapFrog Investments and Tana Africa Capital.
- Nigeria’s central bank announced upgrades to its eNaira central bank digital currency (CBDC).
Central and Eastern Europe
- German digital asset manager Scalable Capital brought its neobroker to investors in Austria.
- Tech.eu profiled Polish fintech Flexee in the wake of its recent $2.9 million fundraising.
- Western Union launched its WU+ integrated app for digital banking and international money transfers in Germany.
Middle East and Northern Africa
- MENA-based Buy Now, Pay Later company Tabby announced a partnership with Visa.
- UAE-based, dine-in payments firm Spades raised $2.5 million in angel investment.
- Mashreq, a lender headquartered in Dubai, announced an investment in UAE-based fintech Cashew.
