Transforming Expenses

Alaan, a UAE-based fintech, has created a multi-currency spend management platform to manage all company spend through corporate cards and automated invoice payments

Alaan, a UAE-based corporate spend-management fintech, recently announced the launch of an industry-first business cashback card. The startup previously had raised $2.5M in seed funding and built a platform enabling businesses to spend through modern corporate cards and automated invoice payments. Business customers using Alaan cards will be rewarded with up to two per cent of their spending in cash back. Alaan is an all-in-one business spending solution powered by smart corporate cards. Alaan empowers employees to buy what they need to get work done, while enabling owners and finance teams to get full control and visibility on business spend. Alaan offers businesses five key features:

Founded in 2021 by ex-McKinsey employees, Parthi Duraisamy and Karun Kurien, Alaan aims to transform the processing of business expenses through its platform that provides employees with business cards to make company purchases and automatically reconciles spending in real-time.

Additionally, Alaan instantly issues virtual cards for e-commerce transactions, SaaS subscriptions, vendor payments or in-store purchases. These cards can be set up with daily or monthly spend limits and can be merchant-locked to be used only with certain merchants such as fuel stations. The platform eliminates expense reports, need for petty cash, and automates bookkeeping tasks via seamless integration with various accounting solution providers.

Philip Johnston, Co-CEO of Opontia, and an early customer of Alaan remarked “Until now, we have had to rely on debit cards, which have high FX rates and no cashback options. We look forward to scaling with Alaan cards, both to save money and to save precious time for our finance teams, so they can focus on our business instead of month-end manual expense management.”

Alaan is headquartered in Dubai and is expanding its headcount and scale in multiple markets across the Middle East.

Excerpts from the interview:

What was the need of an industry-first business cashback card?

Consumers have long had access to cashback cards in the UAE, but that has not been the case for SMEs and corporates. In many instances, SME owners use their personal credit or debit cards for business expenses. If these expenses are significant, it can create problems down the road through the loss of legal protections and difficulty in separating business and personal expenses. Additionally, it can be difficult to track VAT-recoverable purchases when they use their personal credit or debit cards for business expenses. Those are some significant reasons why business expenses should be carried out using business cards.

— ali@khaleejtimes.com