Mastercard ‘Encouraged’ as Egypt’s Paymob Expands Into Pakistan

Digital payments provider Paymob has unveiled its expansion into Pakistan following ‘rapid growth’ in its home market of Egypt, as well as Jordan and Kenya. Mastercard has ‘welcomed’ the move.

Paymob has described the market opportunity in Pakistan as ‘significant’ and ‘perfectly suited’ to its ability to bridge the digital financial gap. Pakistan has a population of more than 220 million with a range of retail outlets and SME businesses across the country’s cities. Over four million SMEs use just over 80,000 POS terminals and less than 3,000 ecommerce gateways.

Pakistan is also ranked as the fifth largest global market for freelancing servicing local and international customers with no sufficient local means of digital payments.

According to Paymob, it can provide individual and micro businesses with payment links and soft POS solutions in order to manage their payments and scale their businesses.

Islam Shawky, CEO and co-founder of Paymob, said: “We are very excited to be launching Pakistan. This comes as an essential step after our successful journey in leading the Egyptian payments landscape where we enable over tens of thousands of merchants with innovative financial solutions.

Paymob operates with a concrete belief that SME’s are the corner stone of every economy and enabling them automatically reflects on the country’s digital economy.”

Mastercard partnership

Established in 2015, Paymob also plans to extend its ‘tap-on-phone’ payment acceptance mechanism service, which it launched in November in partnership with Mastercard – the first-of-its-kind in Egpyt. The solution transforms smartphones and tablets into safe payment acceptance devices for contactless cards, mobile wallets – with no additional equipment or setup-related costs.

Commenting on Paymob’s foray into Pakistan, Atyab Tahir, country head of Mastercard Pakistan & AFG, said: “Paymob’s commitment to building the payments ecosystem is a very encouraging sign for Pakistan. In Paymob, Mastercard and the financial services industry in general will have the right partner to help build a network of digitally enabled merchants accepting non-cash payments. We look forward to the day where digital payments are ubiquitously accepted.”

According to the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, the country has the potential for significant fintech growth, due to its increasing youth population, disruptive internet and smartphone penetration, consumer preferences for mobile phones and social media, a booming e-commerce market facilitating digital payments, and the financial system’s overall capacity for innovation.