Abu Dhabi-based FinTech Nymcard secures $7.6m in Series A funding

The funding will be used to fuel its expansion in the Middle East

Omar Onsi founded Nymcard in Lebanon in 2018. Victor Besa/The National 

Abu Dhabi-based FinTech Nymcard raised $7.6 million in its Series A round led by Shorooq Partners to fuel its growth within the Mena region.

OTF Jasoor Ventures and Venture Souq also participated in the round, the start-up said in a statement on Sunday.

Nymcard focuses on processing transactions and issuing cards, including online cards, on behalf of banks, financial institutions and FinTechs that connect to mobile platforms. It does not compete with payment giants like MasterCard and Visa, but works with them, enabling digital and mobile-first applications to process payments.

“NymCard is solving the problem of card issuance in the region by building a regulated, technological infrastructure that is highly specialised in this area," Mahmoud Adi, founding partner of Shorooq Partners, said.

“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.”

Region-specific figures on card issuances are hard to come by in the Middle East but the adoption of digital payment is on the rise following the pandemic.  Almost two-thirds of UAE respondents to a Standard Chartered survey in September expect the country to become fully cashless by 2030.

FinTechs like Nymcard help to accelerate this shift.

"Card issuance and payment processing ... 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," Mr Adi said. "The NymCard technology addresses these issues and enables clients to adapt their models to the new environment efficiently and cost-effectively."

Nymcard, founded by entrepreneur Omar Onsi in Lebanon in 2018, relocated to Abu Dhabi's Hub71 last year. The company has an in-principle approval from Abu Dhabi Global Market’s Financial Services Regulatory Authority, which allows it to hold money, transfer funds and carry out currency exchange transactions, among other tasks. The approval, secured last year, allows the company to work more closely with global players such as Visa, MasterCard and Western Union.