Paymob has just announced that it will expand into the United Arab Emirates and open a regional hub in the country after a successful round of Series B funding overseen by PayPal.

The UAE expansion will be focused on “empowering (SMEs) and microbusinesses across the seven Emirates, with best-in-class digital payments solutions that drive growth in the digital economy”, Paymob said in a recent press release.

Paymob has already appointed veteran Emirati financial services guru Omar Haddad as its General Manager for the UAE expansion. He’ll be responsible for building a 150-strong team of payment professionals in this new market.

“The UAE is a dynamic ecosystem that fosters entrepreneurship and innovation, largely enabled by tremendous support from the public sector. There are currently over 400,000 businesses in the UAE, 61% of which are microbusinesses and 38% are SMEs. We see a massive opportunity to serve this market segment. Our goal over the next three years is to empower 15% of those merchants with the latest payment technologies to fuel their growth and further digitize the economy,” says Islam Shawky, Paymob CEO and Co-founder.

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As a market leader in the digital payment sector in the MENAP region, Paymob currently caters to over 16.5 million registered users on its mobile wallet infrastructure. The company offers one of the most comprehensive payment platforms for MENAP businesses, and includes over 40 online and physical payment methods via its point-of-sale systems, online gateway, and app.

Paymob currently holds an 87% share of all of the mobile wallet processing volumes in Egypt, and in 2021, it partnered with Mastercard to offer the country’s first “Tap-on-Phone” contactless solution. The payments giant hopes to roll out the same tech to UAE businesses and their customers in 2023 and aims to help companies of all sizes deliver a frictionless and seamless digital payment experience.