Company · Fintech · MENA
NymCard.
The API-first payments infrastructure powering card issuing, embedded lending and money movement across the Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan.
The API-first payments infrastructure powering card issuing, embedded lending and money movement across the Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan.
In 2018, when much of the Middle East still ran on cash, Omar Onsi placed a different bet: that the region would leapfrog straight into embedded finance - and that whoever owned the plumbing underneath would matter more than any single app on top. That bet became NymCard.
NymCard is a full-stack, API-first embedded finance platform. In plain terms, it gives banks, fintechs, telecoms and enterprises the machinery to launch and run their own payment products - card programs, lending, and money movement - without building the regulated core themselves or stitching together half a dozen vendors.
What sets it apart is a decision made early and kept: NymCard built and owns its issuing processor and switch, the system called nCore, rather than licensing that technology from a third party. In an industry where many players are thin wrappers on someone else's rails, owning the core is what lets NymCard promise speed and control - a card program launched in weeks, not quarters.
The platform exposes more than 1,000 APIs. That number reads like a spec-sheet flex until you realize each one traces back to a use case a regional client asked for: gig-economy cards, corporate expense cards, on-demand delivery payouts, Buy Now Pay Later, youth banking, multi-currency and cross-border transfers. NymCard's roadmap is, in effect, the region's fintech wishlist made buildable.
NymCard Payment Services LLC is licensed by the Central Bank of the UAE and is a certified partner of both Visa and Mastercard. In 2025 it became one of the first entities licensed to operate under the CBUAE's new Open Finance regulation - a signal that it treats the regulator as a design partner rather than an obstacle.
Banks, fintech startups, enterprises, telecoms and marketplaces across MENA and Pakistan. Any brand that wants to issue cards or embed finance - without becoming a bank itself.
Launching a regulated card or lending product in the region traditionally meant multiple vendors, licensing headaches and long timelines. NymCard collapses that into one integrated system.
Rather than licensing third-party processing, NymCard built nCore in-house. That vertical integration is what turns speed and regional compliance from marketing lines into a moat.
NymCard owns its processing and switching technology rather than licensing it to third parties - the detail that lets clients ship regulated card programs at speed.
— On NymCard's nCore platform, company materialsCards, lending, money movement, settlement, financial crime and reconciliation - NymCard puts the payments stack on one integrated system, reachable through a single API layer.
Instant issuance of prepaid, debit and credit cards - physical, virtual and tokenized. Cards work with Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay and issuer-branded wallets from day one.
Configurable credit and loan management with real-time decisioning, AI-assisted credit scoring and regional compliance - including BNPL infrastructure built for regulated banks.
Real-time transfers, cross-border remittances, multi-currency support and merchant payout flows - the money-in, money-out layer for embedded products.
Consent-driven account-to-account payment flows launched under CBUAE Open Finance regulation, serving fintechs, SMEs, banks and marketplaces.
Cards tokenized from day one for the major mobile wallets, so cardholders can start spending immediately after issuance.
AML monitoring, sanctions screening, KYC/KYB and reconciliation folded into the same platform rather than bolted on as separate tools.
NymCard runs a B2B, fintech-as-a-service model: clients pay to access the nCore platform and its APIs through program setup, transaction and processing fees, and value-added services. Instead of every brand acquiring its own licenses and building its own switch, they rent NymCard's regulated rails.
Series B investors: QED Investors (lead), Lunate, Dubai Future District Fund, Mashreq Bank, Knollwood, Reciprocal, FJ Labs, Endeavor, Oraseya Capital.
Every brand wants to be a fintech. Few want to become a bank. NymCard sells the gap between the two.
— The embedded-finance thesis, in one lineGlobally, embedded-finance and issuer-processor platforms are a crowded field - Marqeta, Galileo, Nium, Pismo, Thredd and Stripe Issuing all compete for the same job. NymCard's edge is not being everywhere; it is being built for MENA and Pakistan specifically, where "the market" is really ten regulators, several currencies and a long list of edge cases.
That regional focus - paired with CBUAE licensing, Visa and Mastercard certification, and ownership of its own switch - positions NymCard as the infrastructure layer other companies build on rather than a consumer-facing brand most people would recognize. It is the plumbing, not the faucet, and in payments the plumbing is where the durability lives.
Omar Onsi launches NymCard in Abu Dhabi to modernize payments across MENA.
The API-first platform for card issuing and transaction processing goes live.
Capital to grow teams and strengthen services across core markets.
Funding to consolidate presence across 10+ MENA markets and expand all three verticals.
Among the first entities licensed under the UAE Central Bank's Open Finance regulation.
Before NymCard, Omar Onsi built Nymgo - a direct-to-consumer VOIP platform that served more than 3 million users and raised from Intel Capital and Abraaj. His first company put voice calls within reach across emerging markets; his second is doing the same for regulated payments.
More than 15 years building telecom and consumer-technology businesses across MENA taught Onsi a lesson visible in NymCard's design: the flashy app is rarely the hard part. The hard part is the switch, the reconciliation, the compliance - the boring, load-bearing layer. NymCard is a bet on building exactly that.
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NymCard is an embedded finance and payments infrastructure company that lets banks, fintechs, telecoms and enterprises launch and run card, lending and money-movement products through its API-first nCore platform.
NymCard was founded in 2018 in Abu Dhabi by Omar Onsi, alongside co-founder Ayman Chalhoub. Onsi previously built the VOIP company Nymgo.
NymCard has raised roughly $72M in total, including a $22.5M round in 2022 and a $33M Series B led by QED Investors in March 2025.
Yes. NymCard Payment Services LLC is licensed by the Central Bank of the UAE and is a certified partner of both Visa and Mastercard. It is also among the first entities licensed under the CBUAE Open Finance regulation.
NymCard operates across MENA and Pakistan, with offices in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Riyadh, Cairo and Karachi, and a stated presence in 10+ markets.