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Pemo delivers an all-in-one spend management platform streamlining business financial operations. It offers smart corporate cards, comprehensive expense management, automated accounting integrations, and efficient invoice payment systems. The platform ensures real-time control over expenditures by directly syncing financial activities with accounting software, enhancing overall financial visibility.
Established in 2022 by Ayham Gorani and Alessandro Duri, Pemo addresses inherent inefficiencies in traditional financial workflows. Founders recognized that manual processes and approval delays consistently hampered operational speed and financial oversight. Their insight was to transition businesses from reactive management to a proactive system of continuous transparency and control over company spending.
Pemo primarily serves small and medium-sized enterprises across the Middle East and North Africa. The platform enhances financial agility through automation, granting employees spending autonomy within predefined limits while maintaining centralized oversight. Pemo's vision is to embed intuitive financial control directly into daily operations, eliminating manual tasks and fostering scalable business growth.
Pemo has raised $19.0M across 2 funding rounds.
Pemo has raised $19.0M in total across 2 funding rounds.
Pemo has raised $19.0M across 2 funding rounds. Most recently, it raised $7.0M Other Equity in November 2024.
| Date | Round | Lead Investors | Other Investors | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 14, 2024 | $7M Venture Round | — | — | Announced |
| May 1, 2022 | $12M Seed | Cherry Ventures, Shorooq Partners | BITKRAFT Ventures, EQT Ventures, Expedite Ventures, Soma Capital, Techstars, Trajectory Ventures, Gabriel Jarrosson | Announced |
Pemo has raised $19.0M in total across 2 funding rounds.
Pemo's investors include Cherry Ventures, Shorooq Partners, BITKRAFT Ventures, EQT Ventures, Expedite Ventures, Soma Capital, Techstars, Trajectory Ventures, Gabriel Jarrosson.
Pemo is a Dubai-based fintech company building a modern spend management platform for businesses across the MENA region. The company offers smart corporate and virtual cards, automated expense tracking, receipt capture, and AI-driven accounting integrations that help companies control and streamline their spending. Pemo’s product suite is designed to replace manual processes like spreadsheets and petty cash with real-time visibility, policy enforcement, and seamless sync with accounting systems.
Pemo serves small and medium-sized businesses, startups, and growing enterprises in sectors such as tech, e-commerce, hospitality, advertising, and construction. It solves the pain points of fragmented financial workflows, lack of spending control, compliance complexity (especially with new corporate tax regimes), and time-consuming reconciliation. With strong growth momentum—processing an annualized $380 million in card transactions by late 2024 and serving over 5,000 businesses including major brands like Mövenpick, Condé Nast, and Talabat—Pemo has established itself as a leading regional player in digital spend management.
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Founded in 2022, Pemo emerged from the founders’ firsthand experience with the inefficiencies of traditional expense management in fast-growing businesses across the Middle East. The company was co-founded by Alessandro Duri, Ayham Gorani, Valerie Konde, and Saed Ghorani, a team with deep operational and financial expertise in scaling startups and SMEs in the region. They recognized that while global spend management tools existed, they were often too complex, expensive, or poorly adapted to local regulatory and business environments.
The idea for Pemo crystallized around creating a simple, intuitive, and locally relevant solution tailored to MENA businesses—particularly SMEs and startups that needed control over spending without heavy finance teams. Starting in the UAE, Pemo quickly gained traction by offering an all-in-one platform combining corporate cards, automated expense reporting, and accounting automation. Within two years, it reached AED 1.4 billion (~$380 million) in annualized transaction volume and was named among the UAE’s Top Future 100 and Forbes’ Top UAE Fintech Companies. In November 2024, Pemo raised $7 million in Pre-Series A funding, bringing its total capital raised to $19 million and enabling its official launch in Saudi Arabia, a key strategic market.
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All-in-One Spend Management Platform- Combines corporate cards (physical and virtual), expense management, invoice payments, and accounting automation in a single interface.- Designed specifically for the needs of SMEs and startups in MENA, balancing simplicity with powerful controls.
AI-Driven Automation & Real-Time Control- AI-powered receipt matching, categorization, and accounting entries reduce manual work and errors.- Real-time analytics and dashboards give finance teams instant visibility into spending patterns and budget adherence.
Local Market Fit & Compliance Focus- Built with regional nuances in mind, including support for VAT and the UAE’s new corporate income tax regime.- Strong integration with popular regional accounting and ERP systems, making adoption smoother for local businesses.
User-Centric Design & Speed- Intuitive interface that reduces onboarding time and training needs.- Fast card issuance, instant spend limits, and mobile-first experience tailored for distributed teams.
Strategic Expansion & Ecosystem Partnerships- Official launch in Saudi Arabia via a partnership with neoleap, leveraging local payment infrastructure for broader reach.- Positioned as a regional champion rather than a global copy, with a clear roadmap for GCC expansion.
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Pemo is riding two powerful regional trends: the rapid digitization of business finance in the GCC and the rise of homegrown fintech champions tailored to emerging markets. As governments across the UAE and Saudi Arabia push for digital transformation, tax compliance, and cashless economies, demand for modern financial tools has surged—especially among SMEs that previously relied on outdated, manual processes.
The timing is critical: with corporate income tax now in effect in the UAE and similar reforms underway elsewhere in the GCC, businesses urgently need tools that simplify compliance, improve audit readiness, and reduce administrative overhead. Pemo sits at the intersection of payments, accounting, and workflow automation, making it a foundational layer in the modern finance stack for growing companies.
Beyond its product, Pemo is helping shape the regional fintech ecosystem by proving that a MENA-native company can build a scalable, technology-led financial platform that competes with global players on functionality while outperforming them on local relevance. Its expansion into Saudi Arabia also reflects a broader shift: the emergence of a truly integrated GCC-wide fintech market, where successful UAE startups are now using their home base as a springboard into larger neighboring economies.
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Pemo is well-positioned to become the default spend management layer for SMEs and mid-market companies across the GCC. Its next phase will likely involve deeper product expansion—potentially into payroll, vendor payments, and working capital solutions—while continuing to strengthen its AI and automation capabilities. The company’s $19 million war chest and strong early traction suggest it could move toward a Series A in the near term, possibly with strategic investors from the payments or banking world.
Looking ahead, Pemo’s influence will grow not just through customer acquisition but by setting standards for how regional businesses manage their finances digitally. As more companies adopt cloud accounting, real-time reporting, and policy-driven spending, Pemo has the opportunity to evolve from a card and expense tool into a full financial operations platform.
In a region where “build locally, scale regionally” is becoming a winning playbook, Pemo exemplifies how a focused, founder-led fintech can solve real operational pain points—and in doing so, help modernize the financial backbone of an entire region’s business ecosystem.
