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Zbooni

“Can a messaging-native commerce platform become the de-facto payments and sales infrastructure for MENA SMEs selling through WhatsApp and social channels?”

Founded2016
HQDubai, United Arab Emirates
FoundersRamy Assaf
Total raised$11.6M
IndustryVertical SaaS / E-commerce
The story

Founded in 2016 as a messaging-native commerce tool for SMEs in the UAE, Zbooni was incubated at Facebook and built around converting WhatsApp and social-app conversations into transactions. The company launched its merchant app in 2018 and progressively added integrated payments (powered by Checkout.com), catalog management, and analytics. By 2023–2024 it had coined the term 'cCommerce' (conversational commerce) and launched cShop Market as a chat-to-shop marketplace, positioning itself as the MENA region's infrastructure layer for social-channel selling rather than a simple checkout tool.

Last 12 months
2024
2023
Product timeline
2016
Zbooni founded in Dubai and incubated at Facebook, one of only a handful of global companies to receive such support.· pivot
2018
Merchant app went live, enabling SMEs to capture orders and accept payments via messaging apps.· banking
2022
Expanded to multiple MENA markets (UAE, KSA, Jordan, Egypt) and grew to 50+ team members.· pivot
2023
Launched cShop Market, the first chat-to-shop marketplace, and partnered with Checkout.com to improve payment acceptance rates by 12.61%.· payments
2024
Published The MENA cCommerce Report 2024 highlighting WhatsApp-driven commerce trends; rebranded core proposition as 'cCommerce'.· pivot
The stack
1 layer disclosed in Zbooni’s embedded-finance stack
Payments / PSP
Checkout.com
Accounting gap: significant