PayTabs, the award-winning leader in payments across the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia (MEASA), recently announced that it has acquired a 100% share in Paymes, the biggest social commerce platform in Turkey. The acquisition announcement comes just a few weeks after PayTabs purchased Digital Pay in Saudi Arabia in November 2022.
According to the terms of the acquisition, Paymes will act as PayTabs' social commerce platform, enabling millions of independent contractors, small company owners, consultants, personal trainers, and other service providers throughout the Middle East and Africa to get paid right away. The acquisition is in line with PayTabs' ardent pursuit of tracking merchants throughout their lifecycle in order to improve their payment practises. Micro merchants have been an underserved section of the ecosystem, and Paymes, with its minimalist social commerce platform, gives webpreneurs the key to entering the mainstream payment market by allowing them to easily build web storefronts and sell products online. The founders of PayTabs believed that acquiring Paymes was the next logical step in line with PayTabs objective to power the global ecommerce economy with the ultimate super payment's platform after working together for more than a year to introduce social commerce solutions in KSA, the UAE, and Egypt.
Having promoted digital payments in the MENA region for a decade, the partnership with Paymes will allow millions of merchants who trade and sell on social media but lack a legal method of collecting their money to access new social media platforms like Messenger, Facebook, and Instagram. With cutting-edge market differentiators provided by the Paymes platform, such as live cashier inventory management and Paymes Reels, the acquisition gives PayTabs the chance to develop and broaden their payment footprint in the Eurasian regions.
This acquisition enables Paymes to establish itself as a "social commerce processor" in the Turkish market. In order to develop digital and social payments in the MENA area, Paymes, which now serves over 850,000 users in Turkey and Azerbaijan, will take advantage of PayTabs' market presence. One of the main advantages of Paymes is that it enables users to create a miniature online store, referred to as a "Paymes shop." Merchants who would usually pay to have their websites built and constructed by professional agencies can save money by branding and customising the web store. This ease of this feature alone will give weight to empowering a new segment of women entrepreneurs who run micro home-based businesses selling over WhatsApp for example, to participate in the economy, thus contributing to growing household incomes via social commerce.
Speaking in Istanbul, Paymes Co-founder and PayTabs Regional Head/Operating Partner, Hasan Jabbrov said, "Under the acquisition agreement, the Paymes team will expand our responsibilities to cover the many markets that PayTabs operates in throughout MENA. We will also be supporting PayTabs with our range of new social commerce products, a sector in which we have considerable experience. Exciting times ahead for webpreneurs in the region."
Abdulaziz Al Jouf, the PayTabs Group's founder and CEO, made the following remarks at the company's headquarters in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: "Payments are a commodity, and our goal at PayTabs is to make sure that every customer segment—from the largest retailer or bank to the smallest retailer—can easily access payments. By purchasing Paymes, we are strengthening our position as the sole global leader in payment solutions with a payment orchestration platform that can provide payment solutions for any business size, small or large."
The co-founder and CEO of Paymes, Sabrican Zaim, stated in Istanbul, "Based on the number of merchants and expertise we gathered from social commerce, we are getting ready to launch a variety of spin-offs on certain verticals. We are also creating payment methods through live broadcasts with reels in social commerce, which is our strongest suit, in addition to these spin-offs. Paymes, in our opinion, acts as both an enabler and an accelerator for e-commerce firms and payment platforms. We are made stronger by working together as a Facebook commerce partner. By offering our merchants purchase now pay later, consumer financing, and even a unique Paymes Card, we hope to increase their cash flow. As the region's most popular social commerce network, PayTabs aims to serve more merchants across all continents as part of its worldwide ambition.
In 2023, Paymes will debut in three more markets: Uzbekistan, Jordan, and Georgia.
The global social commerce market is anticipated to reach more than $2 trillion by 2025, led by the purchasing habits of millennials and Gen Z, even though the acquisition deal's worth is still secret.