Egypt’s PayTabs Unveils Social Commerce Platform Paymes

Egyptian payment company PayTabs has launched Paymes, a new social commerce platform for customers in the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region.

As the company said in a news release Thursday (May 12), the platform will let “millions of freelancers, artisans, consultants, home-based business owners, personal trainers, food truck vendors, members of the gig economy and more” get payments via social media in seconds.

With Paymes, micro merchants based in Egypt will be able to log into the platform and set up digital storefronts that offer their products or services. These merchants can share their secure payment links over social media platforms including Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram.

Following the launch in Egypt, PayTabs hopes to bring the offering to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the release said.

“Shopping on social media platforms is growing at break-neck speed in the MENA region — and so is our dependence on members of the gig economy and micro merchants for everything, from designing and consulting to tailoring and painting,” PayTabs CEO and founder Abdulaziz Al Jouf said in the news release.

The company pointed to research by Visa that found that half of Egypt’s merchants said digital payments were vital to business recovery.

Egypt has at least 14 mullion gig workers, which PayTabs said can benefit from becoming part of the digital payment ecosystem.

See also: Instant Payouts Improve Gig Worker Satisfaction

As PYMNTS reported recently, the life of a gig worker can be challenging when it comes to financial stability. A survey last year found that just 15% of these workers had enough savings to get them through an emergency expense and that 29% had taken out a payday loan to make ends meet in the previous 12 months.

We spoke to Mrugesh Bavda, product manager at Grubhub, about how the delivery service introduced instant payouts to help its workers deal with those challenges.

“We offer something called Instant Cash Out,” said Bavda. “This feature utilizes something called the Real-Time Payments (RTP) network, built by The Clearing House, which offers immediate funds to our couriers so that they [can receive them] within minutes.”