PayTabs, Saudi’s payment gateway, has announced that it has acquired a 100 percent stake in Paymes, Turkey’s social commerce platform.
Under the terms of the acquisition, Paymes will serve as PayTab’s social commerce platform. It will enable freelancers, artisans, consultants, home-based business owners, personal trainers and micro-vendors across the Middle East and Africa to receive instant payments.
The synergy with Paymes will open up new social media platforms such as Messenger, Facebook and Instagram for merchants who shop and sell over social media but need a legitimate way to collect money.
The acquisition gives PayTabs an opportunity to grow and expand its payments footprint in the Eurasian markets, with features offered by the Paymes platform, such as live cash management and Paymes Reels.
In the Turkish region, this acquisition allows Paymes to promote itself as a “social merchant processor”.
Paymes, which currently serves over 850,000 users across Turkey and Azerbaijan, will leverage the market presence of PayTabs to promote digital and social payments in the MENA region.
One of the key benefits of Paymes is that it allows users to set up a mini online store for e-commerce – known as the “Paymes store”.
The online store can be customized and branded, which saves additional costs for sellers who would otherwise pay to have their websites designed and developed via professional agencies.
This feature will focus on empowering a new segment of women entrepreneurs running micro home-based businesses selling over WhatsApp.
“Pursuant to the acquisition agreement, the Paymes team will expand our responsibilities to cover the multiple markets in which PayTabs operates throughout MENA,” said Paymes co-founder and PayTabs Regional Manager/Operating Partner Hasan Jabbrov.
“We will also support PayTabs with our range of new social commerce products, a sector in which we have significant experience. Exciting times ahead for web entrepreneurs in the region.”
“Payments are a commodity and our mission at PayTabs is to ensure that payments are made easily accessible to all customer segments from the super merchant or bank to a nano merchant,” said PayTabs Group Founder and CEO Abdulaziz Al Jouf.
“By acquiring Paymes, we are consolidating our position as the only payment solutions powerhouse that has a payment platform to provide payment solutions for any size of business – micro or macro, worldwide.”
“With the number of merchants and knowledge that we gained from social commerce, we are preparing to launch various spin-offs in specific verticals,” added Sabrican Zaim, co-founder and CEO of Paymes.
“In addition to these spin-offs, we are developing payment mechanisms through live broadcasts with wheels in social commerce, which is our strongest muscle. We believe Paymes is an enabler with an accelerator effect for payment platforms and e-commerce startups. Our cooperation as a Facebook trading partner strengthens us.
“We aim to improve the cash flows of our merchants by providing them with buy now, pay later, consumer finance and even a special Paymes card. As the most preferred social commerce platform in the region, under PayTab’s global vision we aim to serve multiple sellers on all continents.”
Uzbekistan, Jordan and Georgia are new markets on the horizon for the launch of Paymes in 2023.
The valuation of the acquisition agreement remains unknown.
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