– Fishry.com, Pakistan’s indigenous e-commerce platform, and Paymob, the leading omnichannel payments infrastructure in the MENAP region, announce their partnership to jointly empower small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to build fully hosted self-service e-commerce stores with zero-upfront investment integrated with Paymob check-out. The partnership represents a major milestone in the Egyptian entity’s integration with a homegrown turnkey solution that enables e-commerce entrepreneurs and SMEs to accept digital payments from anywhere in the world.
Speaking at the signing ceremony, co-founder of Fishry.com, Badar Khushnood said, “Fishry is a cutting-edge e-commerce platform especially tailored for Pakistan-based small e-commerce startups and businesses. We recognize that, amongst other factors, a seamless digital payment process is the future of online shopping. Fishry has now collaborated with Paymob, a leading payment gateway provider. Through this partnership, SMEs, women entrepreneurs, and social commerce merchants in Pakistan can start accepting payments right away after setting up their e-stores on Fishry.com. The partnership guarantees to greatly reduce the merchant’s payment gateway setup time and payments processing time through immediate access to all online payments e.g. mobile wallets, credit cards, or direct bank-to-bank transfers.”
Pakistan is the world’s 37th largest e-commerce market with an estimated market size of USD $6 billion in 2021. With growing consumer demand for online shopping and e-commerce sales in Pakistan are expected to outgrow global growth rates in the coming years according to recent reports. There are currently 40,000 e-commerce websites in the country and over 100,000 SMEs that also sell online via B2C marketplaces. In 2022, only one percent of these businesses are run by women, creating a sizeable market opportunity to fuel female financial inclusion.
“This partnership between Paymob and Fishry.com will allow a seamless transactional experience for online merchants to quickly and conveniently launch and manage their online stores which cater to their customized requirements. Through this partnership, we are enabling businesses and entrepreneurs who would otherwise not be able to set up their online stores due to limitations in pricing, integration, and customizations,” said Fawad Abdul Kader, Paymob’s Country Manager in Pakistan.
Social commerce has been on the rise in Pakistan for the past few years, bringing with it several challenges for entrepreneurs who want to scale their businesses. Even though it is an excellent tool for brand awareness and early product-market validation, social commerce is not an efficient channel for merchants because they lack basic e-commerce backend functionality such as standardized data collection, online payments, live inventory connectivity, and logistics integrations. With Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) websites, SME merchants can harness the full potential of e-commerce marketing and offer personalized loyalty programs, discounts, upselling, and cross-sell promotions.
This presents an opportunity for technology companies like Fishry.com and Paymob to empower merchants and help them accept payments and manage and grow their businesses.
