The problem
Palestinian households pay for nearly everything in cash — rent, university fees, electricity, water, and phone top-ups — which means queues, travel, and handling notes for every bill. Large segments of society have no bank account at all, so the formal financial system simply does not reach them, a gap the coronavirus pandemic made urgent when transactions had to go remote.
How it works
PalPay, a Bank of Palestine Group company founded in 2010, first spent a decade building physical distribution: some 7,000 electronic sales points across the West Bank and Gaza Strip plus contracts with 120 companies, merchants, universities, and service providers covering all governorates. On top of that rails it launched Mahfazti (‘My Wallet’) in August 2020, a smartphone app for person-to-person transfers, purchases, bill payment, and online shopping with virtual Visa cards — open to anyone, no bank account needed. Its Aswaqi system adds an online store where companies, merchants, craftsmen, and manufacturers promote and sell goods through the same network.
Pain points
Cash-only bill payment with in-person queues, unbanked citizens locked out of digital commerce, students and tenants travelling to pay fees and rent, and small businesses with no low-cost channel to find new buyers.
Business model
Payments economics on volume: acquiring and processing across the point-of-sale network, wallet transfers, bill collection, and virtual-card flows, plus merchant services and the Aswaqi marketplace channel that brings sellers onto the rails.
Challenges
Cash habits run deep and trust in digital money is fragile; the network must serve fragmented governorates across the West Bank and Gaza; and converting point-of-sale foot traffic into habitual wallet users is a longer behavioural shift than signing up merchants.
Funding
- Raised: MISSING (no citable round disclosed in inspected sources; the company grew as a Bank of Palestine Group subsidiary).
- Non-dilutive milestone: a 2025 UNCDF project implemented by PalPay — a US$205,000 targeted grant matched by a 40% PalPay contribution — to build a functioning digital-payments ecosystem in Gaza that works on basic technology, onboarding nearly 1,000 merchants with over 90% actively transacting (UNCDF).
Latest — Aug 2020
On 6 August 2020 PalPay inaugurated Mahfazti, its ‘My Wallet’ app, offering transfers, purchases, bill pay, and virtual Visa cards without requiring a bank account; company head Eyad Qumsye put the base at about 300,000 users and 7,000 sales points, and the Palestine Monetary Authority’s governor publicly backed e-payment services as a financial-inclusion lever during the pandemic (The Media Line).