Cairo-based HR & payroll management startup PayNas wins grand prize of $50,000 at Seamless North Africa 2019

Cairo-based fintech startup PayNas has won the first place at Seamless North Africa 2019’s pitch competition, receiving $50,000 as cash prize. Paynas was one of five startups that were competing at Pitch-off, a pitch competition at Seamless North Africa, that’s one of the leading financial services and payments events of the region. This year’s edition took place in Cairo earlier this week.

Founded last year by Mohamed Mounir, PayNas is a cloud-based platform for SMEs that allows them to manage their employees’ payroll, documents, onboarding, recruitment, attendance, leave, performance and even benefits online. It might sound like one of the many cloud-based HR Information Systems that we see these days but apparently, it offers more than a regular HR Management SaaS platform.

The employers using PayNas don’t have to open bank accounts for their employees as PayNas can provide them with Visa powered Debit & Credit Cards for all the employees. PayNas also comes geolocation and geofencing features enabling employers to monitor and improve the productivity and efficiency of their teams.

PayNas also has a benefits marketplace as part of its platform that enables the employers to buy different benefits (/perks) for their employees at competitive rates.

The startup was part of counts Visa (which happens to be the sponsor of this pitch competition but did not have any representation in the jury), Axa and Banque Misr among its partners.

PayNas was part of EFGEV Fintech’s (a Cairo based accelerator that was established as a joint venture between Egypt Ventures & EFG Finance) first cohort.

Update – Jun 20, 2019 – 9:10 AM GMT: The story was updated to correct the name(s) of founding team.