The Definitive Guide to Living in the Capital , Cairo , Egypt

Amidst the viral news on social media of Swvl raising the largest-ever funding round for an Egyptian startup, you may have missed the story of another fellow Cairo-based startup that just won a seed fund of 50,000 dollars. Seamless North Africa 2019 took place earlier this week, on the 17th and 18th of June, and it is with great pride that we introduce to you the startup, PayNas!

What is Seamless Africa, and what is PayNas? First off, Seamless is North Africa’s biggest, boldest, and best event covering payment and financial services innovation, according to their website. The description reads that the event brings together the entire financial ecosystem to discuss, debate, and evaluate the future of money. Across two days of keynote presentations, panels, case studies, interviews, demos, roundtables, and workshops, you discover the trends, disruptors, and innovations that are revolutionising the industry as we know it.

As for the victorious startup, we went straight to their Facebook page and website to read all about it. They state that PayNas is a cloud platform that provides hassle-free banking, HR management, and employee benefits in one place and in a single workflow, through partnerships with some big names, including Visa Inc. and Banque Misr.

We felt that the description was a bit vague, so we explored a bit more till we found a clearer description from their profile on F6S, the highest ranking free network where founders get deals, list & recruit startup jobs, and apply for funding, while investors can find potential startups. It states, “PayNas is a cloud HR and Payroll platform that connects and brings banking, along with different benefits, to SME employees at a low cost with a subscription model.” The platform depends on six main pillars:

1. Cloud HRM platform with many features, including attendance, vacation, and payroll management.
2. We open a real bank account for employees to ensure financial inclusion.
3. In partnership with Visa, PayNas issues co-branded prepaid, debit, and credit cards.
4. Offering extra benefits at low costs, such as medical insurance in partnership with AXA, Telco bundles, and transportation packages with SWVL.
5. Size doesn’t matter, so even the smallest startup can benefit from our services.  
6. Fast onboarding process, granted with our deal with Visa and Banque Misr, one of the biggest banks in Egypt and Africa.

Back to the competition. PayNas celebrated on the 18th of June with a triumphant post, “It was a tough competition, but our efforts, hard work, and creativity to solve employee management problems made us the winners today! We are planning for more upcoming achievements and bigger success stories. Stay tuned to see what the future will reveal.” According to MENAbytes, it was only one of the five startups that were competing at the pitch competition, and was only founded last year, by Mohamed Mounir.

We wish you the best of luck Mohamed with all your startup’s future endeavours!