Company Profile
Dubai, U.A.E.
Est. 2016
Zbooni & the checkout that lives in your chat
The MENA pioneer of cCommerce - selling, invoicing and getting paid without the customer ever leaving the message thread.
The MENA pioneer of cCommerce - selling, invoicing and getting paid without the customer ever leaving the message thread.
It started with hats. Sometime around 2016, Ramy Assaf watched his wife sell them on Instagram, fielding orders and questions through direct messages. The selling worked. The paying did not. Customers loved the conversation, then hit a wall the moment money had to change hands - a link to somewhere else, a form, a drop-off. That gap between "I want it" and "here's my payment" became the whole thesis of Zbooni.
Zbooni is a conversational commerce platform - a category the company likes to shorten to cCommerce. In plain terms, it lets a business take an order, send an invoice and collect payment inside the same chat the customer is already in: WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Telegram. The merchant builds a cart or an invoice, a payment link is generated, and the buyer checks out with a card, Apple Pay or Mada without downloading an app or bouncing to a separate storefront.
The logic rests on a single, stubborn number. Email open rates hover around 10%. Messages on WhatsApp sit closer to 98%. If that is where attention lives, Zbooni's argument goes, that is where the checkout should live too. The company reports merchants seeing far higher conversion on a shared cart than the low single digits typical of traditional online stores - because the sale closes inside a thread the buyer already trusts.
That framing matters more in the Middle East than almost anywhere. The region leans heavily on messaging apps for everyday business, and many small sellers never built a conventional website at all. Zbooni met them where they were rather than asking them to move.
For merchants without an IT team - a florist, a home baker, a car dealer - the appeal is that the technical work disappears. There is no site to maintain, no bank relationship to negotiate. Zbooni sits between the seller and the card networks and handles the plumbing.
What started as an innovative way of capturing business payments via messaging apps is evolving into a wider solution, built with a focus on being mobile and simple to use.
Zbooni's customers are small and medium businesses across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt. By 2024 the company counted roughly 12,000 active merchants and more than 500,000 end-customers, and reported processing about 700,000 transactions worth around $150M in a single year. The merchant list reads like a high street: fashion labels, florists such as Blossom Tree, caterers, cake shops, car dealers, clinics, artists, even a basketball club.
The problem Zbooni solves is the awkward handoff. A customer messages a business, agrees on a price, and then - on most setups - has to be sent somewhere else to pay. Every extra step is a chance to lose the sale. Zbooni collapses the order, the invoice and the payment into one continuous conversation, and gives the merchant a mobile dashboard to track what sold, to whom, and how the receipts are stacking up.
For a small seller who does not qualify for, or does not want to manage, a full payment-gateway contract, that bridge to Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay and Mada is the actual product. The chat is the storefront; Zbooni is the cash register behind it.
A mobile app for iOS and Android to capture orders, build custom invoices, close sales via chat, and track customers, receipts and sales performance.
Live since 2018Generate a payment link or QR code per order. Customers pay by Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay or Mada without leaving the conversation.
2018A PCI DSS-compliant proprietary gateway across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, connecting SMEs to card networks without a direct bank relationship.
~2020A chat-to-shop marketplace connecting Zbooni merchants with shoppers for live, interactive shopping - the company's step from tooling toward a consumer surface.
2023An annual study of conversational-commerce behavior in the region, drawn from data across thousands of merchants and used to define the category.
2024Hooks into Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce and WooCommerce, plus processors like PayFort, PayTabs and Stripe, so existing catalogs plug in.
OngoingZbooni's model is transaction-based: it takes a small commission on each payment that flows through the platform and gateway, layered with subscription and pricing packages for merchants. Public aggregators put 2024 revenue near $3.4M, up more than 40% on the prior year. The company does not need the merchant to have a bank deal or a website - it earns when the sale closes.
What sets it apart is less any single feature and more a decision about where commerce should happen. Plenty of tools bolt chat onto an online store; Zbooni started from the chat and treated the store as optional. It coined the cCommerce label in MENA, published the research to define it, and was one of a small number of startups incubated by Facebook - which helped cement its deep integrations with WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger.
Regional rivals like Mamo, Lyvely and Chpter, and global chat-commerce tools such as Charles, ManyChat, Haptik, Zoko and Yalo, chase overlapping use cases. Zbooni's edge is its home-market depth: gateway coverage across four Arab markets, a merchant base that grew up on messaging, and a head start on naming the category it competes in.
Backers across rounds include Chalhoub Group, B&Y Venture Partners, March Holding, the California-based Enterprise Fund, and MEVP. The 2021 Series A closed at $9.5M in two tranches.
Ramy Assaf and Ashraf Atia start the company after watching small sellers take orders over messaging apps.
The business app launches, letting merchants capture orders and get paid through chat.
Chalhoub Group and B&Y Venture Partners back the company's early growth.
A January tranche and a $4.5M September tranche close the round with March Holding, Enterprise Fund and Chalhoub Group.
Zbooni opens a chat-to-shop marketplace in the UAE, moving from tooling toward a consumer marketplace.
Zbooni reports ~700,000 transactions worth ~$150M and lands at #47 on Forbes Middle East's Fintech 50 (2025).
The idea was sparked by the founder's wife selling hats on Instagram and taking orders through DMs.
Zbooni was incubated at Facebook - rare access for a startup.
It coined the term cCommerce to describe selling inside the chat window.
The tagline is simply: "Say hello to cCommerce."
Merchants range from florists and caterers to car dealers and a basketball club.
Previously at Middle East Venture Partners. Spotted the chat-commerce gap watching everyday sellers on social apps, and has led Zbooni's push to define cCommerce in the region.
Co-founder focused on commercial and operations. Around 44 people work at Zbooni, based out of Dubai's Jumeirah Lake Towers.
Zbooni is a conversational commerce platform that lets businesses capture orders, send invoices and accept payments directly inside messaging and social apps like WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger, without the customer leaving the chat.
Zbooni was founded in 2016 in Dubai by Ramy Assaf (Co-Founder & CEO) and Ashraf Atia (Co-Founder & COO).
It charges a small commission per transaction processed through its platform and gateway, plus merchant subscription and pricing packages.
Zbooni serves merchants and shoppers across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, with its payment gateway available in those markets.
Zbooni raised a $1.1M seed round in 2019 and closed a $9.5M Series A in 2021 (a $5M first tranche and a $4.5M second tranche), with backers including Chalhoub Group, March Holding, Enterprise Fund, MEVP and B&Y Venture Partners.
Figures - transaction volume, merchant and customer counts, revenue and funding - are drawn from public reporting (Forbes Middle East, Wamda, The National, MENAbytes, Entrepreneur ME) and aggregators, and are approximate. Founding year is cited as 2016 by most sources, with the merchant app launching in 2018.