With the advent of technology in our daily lives, there has been a massive boost in the emergence of fintech startups over the last decade. The label Fintech alone has been heating Silicon Valley as well. Fintech has proved to be one of the fastest-growing sectors in the tech industry, over the last few years.
Financial technology, or fintech, is revolutionizing the way financial services companies operate. Companies across the Middle East are racing toward digitization, to put customers at the forefront of their focus by using technologies such as voice, data, and AI.
The UAE-based PayTabs is doing the same. PayTabs is a global payment processing platform, specializing in processing payments in multiple currencies and providing a wide range of alternative payment methods.
What is PayTabs?
The UAE-based PayTabs was launched in January 2014 with a mission to provide a simple and secure platform to individuals and organizations for transactions across the world.
Being the first homegrown company to provide seamless B2B e-commerce solutions to SME’s, PayTabs was an early starter in the space which was later termed “fintech”. Backed by private Saudi investment, PayTabs in-built and exported a full stack of game-changing mobile applications, hospitality, governmental, education, airline, travel, transport, and biller solutions, to interlink the multi-billion-dollar enterprise market chain in the MENA region.
Background of Founders
Abdulaziz Fahad Al Jouf
Abdulaziz Fahad Al Jouf is a Saudi entrepreneur and the Founder and CEO of PayTabs, a Saudia-based payment processing company that started in 2014.
Abdulaziz started work in 1999 with the oil giant Saudi Aramco where he acquired Microsoft MCP, MCA, MCSE, MCSE +S, and Cisco Networking Engineering Admin CNA. He later moved to the USA where he gained a BSc in IT from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and an ECE & E from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He later went on to complete his MBA from the New York Institute of Technology.
Why PayTabs?
PayTabs is an award-winning payments solutions powerhouse founded by Abdulaziz Al Jouf. Having processed the first live payment gateway transaction in June 2014, PayTabs now processes transactions in multiple currencies and markets, swiftly and securely.
In 2017, three years after its launch the startup was listed by Forbes as one of Saudi Arabia’s 50 most promising startups of 2016. Using API plugins, the startup facilitates seamless e-commerce, m-commerce, and social commerce solutions for merchants and super merchants as well as “plug and play” payment features via their platform.
In 2021, the company launched PT Touch, the first soft POS solution in the MENA market to transform smartphones into merchant point of sale (POS) terminals. While in 2022, PayTabs made a leapfrog move to pioneer next-generation payments, by launching its home-owned, globally validated unified payments as well as next-generation transaction processing platform called, PayTabs SwitchOn.
Funding Raised
Series-B Round: Raised $20 million
In 2017, PayTabs raised $20 million from investors, with the lead investor being Saudi Aramco to kick off an aggressive expansion plan across 20 markets over the course of the next two years.
Future Prospects
PayTabs aims to support its customers in progressing towards a cashless society with increasing mobile payments. Since raising its last round of investment, the company has concentrated on expanding across the MENA region, Southeast Asia, and many African and European nations.
PayTabs focuses on B2B payment solutions, and the business claims to have completed transactions in 168 currencies across 49 sectors.
