UAE-based banking-as-a-service (BaaS) solution provider NymCard has raked in $7.6m in a Series A funding round to expand in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
The funding round was led by Shorooq Partners, which was joined by OTF Jasoor Ventures and VentureSouq. The latest investment brings the total amount raised by the company to date to $12m.
The startup will use the capital to support its expansion in the MENA region.
Launched in 2017, NymCard provides financial institutions, banks, and fintechs, with access to an API-based processing platform that digitises payment card issuance.
This helps them slash costs and launch consumer-focused payment programmes in less than eight weeks. Its technology is said to enable fintech firms to make a full-scale entry into the market.
NymCard already secured the regulatory nod from the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) to help remove the complexities from payment card issuance.
NymCard founder and CEO Omar Onsi said: “We have developed the tech stack ground-up giving us speed and agility that no other legacy player can match.
“Over the past two years, we have served regional banks and fintechs where one of our clients today is the fastest-growing issuer in Iraq and is the first neobank in the region.”
Shorooq Partners founding partner Mahmoud Adi said: “NymCard is solving the problem of card issuance in the region by building a regulated, technological infrastructure that is highly specialised in this area. “It allows the rest of the ecosystem to leverage their technology as a plug-and-play infrastructure to seamlessly build and launch card programmes, democratising card issuance and payments.
“Card issuance and payment processing, however, it is a tightly controlled, highly regulated, and technologically complicated process and even the largest banks in the region take months to design and issue card programmes.
“The NymCard technology addresses these issues and enables clients to adapt their models to the new environment efficiently and cost-effectively.”