Seamless North Africa 2019, the two-day conference came to an end on the 18th of June at the Nile Ritz-Carlton in Downtown Cairo, with several winners across different competitions.
The biggest winner of the event was Paynas; the increasingly popular HR & payroll cloud platform solution. The Egyptian startup, Paynas battled against four other startups in the FinTech Pitch-off, for a grand prize of $50,000, which is sponsored by Visa.
After the outstanding presentations of local & international competing startups, the favorable startup Paynas finally won the opinions of the judging panel which included Mr. Mike Sigal (Partner, Upside Partners &, 500 startups), Mr. Sopnendu Mohanty (CFO - Monetary Authority of Singapore), Mr. Akef El Maghraby (Deputy Chairman, Banque Misr), Dr. Khaled Ismail (HIM-angel) as well as Ms. Dalia Elbaz (National Bank of Egypt).
Reference to Paynas overwhelming performance and innovative FinTech idea, they received the $50,000 cheque as the event came to a close. In addition to that, the winning startup “Paynas” will be invited to attend a meeting with the Central Bank of Egypt’s top management to explore means of support, in order to accelerate the launch of its application in the Egyptian market. This initiative comes within the framework of the Central Bank of Egypt's keenness to sponsor creative talents and foster them, which will be positively reflected on the services extended to citizens and promotes Financial Inclusion.
Paynas has been gaining traction in the Egyptian market and aims to enhance the processes of both employees and employers, through providing a hassle-free, one-stop solution that handles employees’ documentation, attendance, onboarding, recruitment, banking services, payroll and much more. Paynas generally relies on cloud computing technologies to provide sustaining services to SME’s.
Held in Egypt for the second year in a row, Seamless 2019 garnered critical acclaim from the local, regional & international financial communities, emphasizing Africa’s emerging FinTech ecosystem that is on its way to become a major influencer in the international FinTech arena. This year’s conference was held under the auspices of the Prime Minister of Egypt H.E. Dr. Mostafa Madbouly, under the host of the Central bank of Egypt and in partnership with the League of Arab States and the Council of Arab Economic Unity and co-organized by the Egyptian Banking Institute.
