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Islam Shawky is the co-founder and CEO of Paymob, MENA's most comprehensive payments infrastructure. He co-founded the company in 2015 alongside Alain El Hajj and Mostafa Menessy, fellow students at the American University in Cairo, where he was completing his BSc in Mechanical Engineering.
Under Shawky's leadership, Paymob has grown from an Egyptian startup into one of the fastest-growing fintechs in the region, now serving more than 390,000 merchants across Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Oman. The company offers over 60 payment methods, processes hundreds of millions of transactions a year, and has raised $90 million from investors including PayPal Ventures, Kora Capital, Clay Point Capital, EBRD, Endeavor Catalyst, Global Ventures, FMO, A15, British International Investment, Helios Digital Ventures, and Nclude.
Shawky was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2021 and became an Endeavor Entrepreneur in 2022. He sits on the Board of Trustees of the Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center (TIEC), and his focus remains on building the infrastructure that drives financial inclusion and powers the digital economy across MENA.
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