Egypt’s HR And Payroll Startup PayNas Wins USD 50 K At Seamless North Africa 2019

Cairo-based HR and payroll management startup PayNas emerged the overall winner at this year’s edition of Seamless North Africa, taking home the USD 50 K prize for winning the pitch competition. The fintech startup was one of the five competitors in the pitch-off session yesterday.

The two-day conference was hosted in Cairo this week by the Central Bank of Egypt, in collaboration with the Council of Arab Economic Unity and the League of Arab States, and was co-organized by the Egyptian Banking Institute (EBI).

Over 1400 local and foreign participants witnessed the event, and over 150 prominent experts in the fintech, e-payments and e-commerce spaces attended.

PayNas was founded by Mohammed Mounir, Mohamed Fakhreldin and Dina Elshair in 2017. The service is basically a cloud-based platform for Small and Medium Enterprises to efficiently manage the payroll of their workers. Everything from on-boarding to recruitment, documents to attendance, performance to leave, and benefits.

The award to the startup does not fall short of Visa’s ongoing efforts to support innovation and creativity in the financial technology sector. The pitch-off created an avenue for fintech from different parts of the globe to present their innovative solutions to leading industry gurus.

Competing fintechs were given 5 minutes to convince the panel of their innovative solutions in any of the fields of financial inclusion, digital payments, insurance, settlements, asset management, mobile solutions, P2P, security, authentication or other fintech-related solutions.

“We are happy to offer Paynas the grand prize, and Visa is always keen on developing the financial sector in Egypt and in the region and expanding our relationship with the government.

We have partnered with the Central Bank of Egypt in conducting workshops related to financial inclusion, and we’re always looking to build the ecosystem that fosters innovative ideas.

Providing the support, knowledge, and best practices is always a key priority for Visa to nurture Fintechs around the region,” stated Ahmed Gaber, Visa General Manager, North Africa.

“The Fintech pitch-off provided local and global Fintechs with an opportunity to affirm their innovative approach towards solving pain points facing numerous industries.

The pitch-off is an opportunity for people at all levels in the Fintech community to talk to each other, share what challenges them, and learn from each other. We are working on making it simpler and quicker for early-stage startups to connect with our network than ever before. ,” continued Gaber.