Paymob Teams With IKEA Egypt to Offer More Ways to Pay

Egyptian FinTech Paymob is working with IKEA to give furniture buyers more payment options.

The partnership, announced in a news release provided to PYMNTS Tuesday (March 21), will let customers at IKEA Egypt pay by digital wallets, bank-offered easy payment plans (EPP) and consumer finance options, as well as cards.

“This expanded selection of more flexible payment methods, powered by Paymob’s secure and trusted infrastructure, will make IKEA’s products more accessible to a greater number of consumers across Egypt,” the release said.

With bank EPPs, the release said, consumers will get the convenience of paying for purchases over time and gain more control over their spending.

How consumers pay for things is of great importance to them, as recent research in the PYMNTS Global Shopping Index has shown.

This year, for the second year in a row, consumers ranked paying using preferred methods as the most important element of their shopping trips, particularly in store. The study saw in-store contactless card use skyrocket — up 567% year over year — while digital wallet use climbed by 33% in the same time frame.

As for alternative payment methods such as buy now, pay later (BNPL), merchant apps, and QR codes, 11% of online consumers paid with one of these methods last year, representing another drastic leap forward, 559% year over year. It’s also, PYMNTS wrote, a sign that merchants should start supporting these methods.

“Investing in a diverse array of payment choices can help merchants reach this growing cohort of consumers opting for alternative payments,” the study said.

Meanwhile, PYMNTS spoke with Paymob CEO and Co-founder Islam Shawky last month about the imbalance between payments issuance and payments acceptance in emerging markets.

He said that disparity is hindering businesses from realizing their full potential, especially smaller mom-and-pop operations.

“We’re looking at markets that are very advanced in issuance but have a mismatch in acceptance,” Shawky told PYMNTS, using the example of Pakistan, a country with a population of over 220 million where Paymob expanded operations last year.

“[Pakistan has] more than 55 million cards, almost 22 million of them are NFC-enabled,” he said. “They have a number of digital banks and private issuers that are scaling within the market. However, when you look at the acceptance side, the market has around 80-85,000 PoS in the hands of not more than 40,000 merchants.”

That large gap is what Paymob is trying to fill, especially with traditional banks spending more time focused on solving the needs of larger companies.

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