Spare Secures $5M to Power MENA’s Open Banking Transformation

Spare, the Riyadh-based open banking infrastructure startup, has just pulled in $5 million in its latest pre-Series A round. The raise was spearheaded by anb Seed Fund, the venture arm of ANB Capital, itself part of one of Saudi Arabia’s oldest and most established banks. Tagging along were a solid line-up of familiar names in the region’s venture scene — Vision Ventures, SEEDRA Ventures, 500 Global, Boubyan Ventures, MEVP and a handful of well-placed individual backers.

The firm was launched back in 2019 by Dalal AlRayes and Saurabh Shah. Their pitch sounds simple but powerful: a secure platform that lets businesses plug directly into banks across the Middle East. What Spare actually does is bundle together messy, fragmented banking data through APIs, turning it into something financial firms can use for payments, verification or even real-time risk checks. It’s all heavily regulated, being licensed in Bahrain and recognised by several Gulf regulators, which gives them more credibility than many of the scrappy new fintechs crowding the market.

Some of the big regional names — Tap Payments, Tamara and Zid — are already using Spare’s rails to build smoother checkout experiences and handle payments under the hood. You could say Spare is becoming the plumbing of Gulf fintech, quietly keeping the pipes unclogged while shinier consumer-facing apps get the spotlight. I reckon that’s not a bad place to be.

Speaking about the raise, AlRayes described Spare’s mission as “building the financial rails for the next generation of businesses in MENA”. The money, she added, will go into product development, tighter bank integrations, and growing adoption of secure infrastructure. Backers sounded equally upbeat: Omar Ardati of anb called Spare a “new standard” for the market, crediting its focus on speed and security, while Vision Ventures’ Kais Alessa hailed it as spot on for the region’s push towards connected finance.

Now, anyone who works with startups in the Gulf knows regulation has been a bit of a faff at times. But the tide is shifting. The Saudi Central Bank is piloting an Open Banking Lab with staged frameworks for companies like Spare to play in. The UAE is carving out its own Open Finance regime too. With forecasts suggesting the MENA open finance scene could top $10 billion by 2030, it’s little wonder investors are piling in.

At Arageek, I’ve lost count of how many times founders across the region have told me the same thing: “we could scale faster if the banks just opened up their systems.” Honestly, I’ve seen startups burn eager teams and months of effort just trying to get basic integrations. That’s why this kind of infrastructure really matters. It may not be glamorous, but it cuts the headaches and lets entrepreneurs focus on customers rather than endless paperwork and compliance roundabouts.

Spare’s next steps will test whether it can live up to this promise. Expansion across the GCC, more API integrations, and a push to underpin the digital economy all sound big and bold on paper. Whether they can pull it off in practice… well, that’s the real game. But for now, the company looks chuffed to bits with its backing and seems well placed to help shape the next era of MENA fintech.

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