The problem
A corner shop in Doha that wants to accept cards has historically faced a hardware problem: lease a POS terminal, file acquiring paperwork, wait. Cash stayed king by default, and micro-merchants, home businesses, and delivery sellers stayed outside digital acceptance — with bills, receipts, and spending scattered across paper and chat threads.
How it works
SkipCash gives merchants QR codes, payment links, an online gateway, and a tap-to-phone mobile POS that turns an ordinary smartphone into a payment terminal — no dedicated hardware. Shoppers link a card once and pay by QR or link, then track spending through visual expense reports, organised receipts, and virtual family accounts inside the consumer app.
Pain points
Device costs and onboarding paperwork that lock small merchants to cash; consumers juggling bills and receipts; and a market where contactless demand outran the acquiring infrastructure built for big retail.
Business model
Merchant acceptance across QR, link, gateway, and tap-to-phone rails, monetised on the transaction flow it processes, with the QIIB strategic investment earmarked for new fintech products and deeper payments infrastructure across Qatar and the GCC.
Challenges
Every new Gulf market means fresh licensing and bank partnerships; incumbent acquirers and bank-owned POS estates won’t yield share cheaply; and QAR-billion-scale volumes demand fraud, settlement, and chargeback machinery that a hardware-free model must prove under stress.
Funding
- Raised: $4M Series A (February 2026), backed by Qatar Development Bank, Qatar Islamic Insurance Company, KBN Holding Group, Finjan Venture Investments, Ula Capital, and Doha Tech Angels (Startup Scene).
- Earlier: ~$2M (QAR 7M) seed in April 2021 from private Qatari investors, after a QAR 700K QSTP product-development award in July 2020 (Wamda).
- Valuation: MISSING.
Latest — July 2026
On 23 July 2026 SkipCash secured a strategic investment from Qatar International Islamic Bank (QIIB) to expand its payments infrastructure, accelerate product development, and push GCC expansion through bank-fintech partnerships. The company reported 10,000+ merchants and QAR 1B+ processed during 2025.