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Ayham Gorani built and sold a company in Germany before moving to the UAE in 2011. In 2022, he co-founded Pemo, a spend management platform that now offers UAE businesses corporate cards, expense management, accounting automation and invoicing in one product. He is the company’s chief executive.
2026 has been a busy year for Pemo. The Central Bank of the UAE granted it in-principle approval for a Stored Value Facilities licence on 28 July, and on 4 August it launched a business account with ruya, an Ajman-based Islamic digital bank. Gorani has also pitched an argument that AI will remove expense admin altogether. We put seven questions to him on what he saw in 2022, how much of that admin the AI now handles, how Pemo will cope with UAE e-invoicing, and what the licence and the ruya account change.
The interview
You built and sold a company in Germany before moving to the UAE in 2011. What did you see in how UAE small businesses handle money that made you start Pemo in 2022?
Ayham Gorani: We built Pemo for ourselves first. Running businesses in the UAE, we lived with the same problem that every SME owner here knew well: finance was still run by hand.
In 2022, most small and medium-sized businesses relied on shared company cards or employees’ personal cards, cash advances and petty cash. Receipts were chased at the end of every month, and reconciliation happened in spreadsheets, often by the founder late at night. It cost businesses hours and hours of time that they never got back, and gave them very little visibility of where their money was going.
We set out to solve this problem by bringing all of that into one platform: corporate cards, expense management, accounting automation and invoice management, replacing manual tracking and patchy finance workflows. Put simply, we are building the finance function that SMEs can’t yet afford to hire.
Your survey found that about a quarter of UAE employees spend roughly an hour a month on expenses. That survey is from 2024. Among Pemo’s customers today, what share of spending still goes through out-of-pocket claims rather than company cards?
Ayham Gorani: Many UAE businesses are automating their finance operations, but expenses still take up a surprising amount of staff time. Across the market, employees still spend roughly 8 hours a month on expense admin: keeping paper receipts, filling in claim forms and waiting to be paid back.
Out-of-pocket claims are where most of that time goes. An employee pays with the company’s petty cash or their own card, keeps or loses the receipt, fills in a claim, waits for a manager to approve it and then waits again to be reimbursed. Finance then has to check it, code it and match it by hand, often weeks after the money was spent.
Once a business moves onto Pemo, those claims drop sharply. Each employee or team can have its own physical or virtual card, with spending limits set by the finance team, so staff rarely need to use their own money. Subscriptions, travel, supplier payments and advertising spend can each sit on a dedicated card, which also gives finance a clear view of every cost line.
The claims that remain tend to be one-offs, such as a taxi abroad or a merchant that only takes cash. Even then, the employee sends a photo of the receipt by upload, email or WhatsApp, our AI reads it, and the reimbursement goes through the same approval process as card spend, and processing it takes seconds.
Your argument is that AI can remove the admin entirely. Today, what share of transactions are coded and matched with no one on the finance team touching them, and where does the AI still get it wrong?
Ayham Gorani: The clearest way to answer this is to look at what the AI does today and where a person still adds value.
Today, receipts reach Pemo by upload, email forwarding or WhatsApp. Our AI reads each one, including the invoice number and the supplier’s tax registration number (TRN), checking it for fraud and matching it to the right card transaction.
Pemo Copilot then pre-fills the accounting fields, such as the chart of accounts and the vendor. It learns from each company’s own export history and from every correction its accountant makes, so it gets more accurate the longer a business uses it. New vendors can be created in the accounting system automatically, and everything syncs through API with QuickBooks, Xero, Zoho Books, Tally, Wafeq, Mazeed and many other platforms.
Over a couple of cycles AI gets it wrong in less than 1% of cases, and those cases follow a pattern:
- New companies with little transaction history for the AI to learn from
- First-time merchants that no other company in the UAE has transacted with
- A single receipt that covers several types of cost
- Judgement calls on how a particular item should be coded
That is where the finance team comes in. Their role moves from typing data to reviewing it. For our customers, closing the books at month end has gone from around seven days to a couple of hours.
You cite e-invoicing becoming mandatory from January 2027. How will Pemo customers send compliant e-invoices: through a partner, or are you applying yourselves to be an accredited partner with the Ministry of Finance?
Ayham Gorani: We are integrating with an Accredited Service Provider (ASP) approved by the Ministry of Finance.
It works simply for the customer. They create the invoice in Pemo, and Pemo sends it to the ASP they have connected. The ASP validates the invoice, delivers it to the buyer and reports it to the Federal Tax Authority. The status then shows back in Pemo.
We chose this route because becoming an ASP is a regulated build in its own right, and our focus is on what SMEs need: invoicing that sits where their spend data already lives. For Pemo customers, day-to-day work stays the same. They create invoices and track whether they’ve been paid in one platform, with no need to log in to several providers.
It’s also worth noting the timing. January 2027 applies to businesses with annual revenue of AED 50 million or more. Businesses below that threshold, which covers most SMEs, follow on 1st July 2027, and need to appoint an ASP by 31st March 2027.
You received in-principle approval for a Stored Value Facilities licence in July. What will the full licence let Pemo do that it can’t do today, and when do you expect it?
Ayham Gorani: Receiving in-principle approval from the Central Bank of the UAE for a Stored Value Facilities licence was a big moment in Pemo’s journey so far. We started Pemo in 2022 to give UAE SMEs a better way to run their finances, and this milestone reflects years of work by our team to build Pemo to a high standard of governance and compliance.
It also matters to the businesses that use Pemo every day. When you look after a company’s spend, trust is everything, and this step shows how seriously we take that responsibility. It further allows us to offer a better integrated solution and the signals to our customers that we have put work into our bank grade security.
It puts Pemo on firmer ground to expand the products we offer SMEs over time. Our focus is depth rather than breadth. We want to do more for the businesses that already rely on Pemo every day, making their finance operations simpler, faster and more connected.
The UAE is building one of the most progressive fintech environments in the world, and the Central Bank’s regulatory framework is a big part of that. We’re proud to be growing here and committed to playing our part in the country’s digital economy.
We are continuing to work through the process with the Central Bank and will share more when the time is right. We won’t speculate on timing, as that rests with the regulator.
In August you launched a business account with ruya, with an expected profit rate of up to 3.75%. How many customers have opened one, and what happens to that arrangement once Pemo holds its own licence?
Ayham Gorani: The response has been fantastic. Hundreds of businesses have already opened a Pemo business account, and adoption has exceeded our own expectations. For many SMEs, cash sitting in a current account earns nothing while they wait for the next payroll or supplier run. With an expected profit rate of up to 3.75%, that cash can now work harder for them.
It also brings everything into one place. Businesses can earn on their balance, pay with Pemo cards, manage expenses and send invoices without moving between banks, spreadsheets and apps. That is what SMEs have been asking us for, and it’s a big step towards Pemo becoming the one platform where a business runs its finances.
Working with ruya has been central to that. They share our view that UAE SMEs deserve modern, digital-first financial services, and together we were able to bring a Sharia-compliant product to market that fits the way small businesses work today.
Our partnership with ruya stays exactly as it is. Pemo’s focus is on being the finance platform for SMEs, and banking partners such as ruya are central to how we deliver that. Any future licence would sit alongside the partnership, with no change to the account our customers hold today.
Twelve months from now, what number would show the expense report is really disappearing for UAE businesses: the share of spend on Pemo cards, the time to close, or something else?
Ayham Gorani: Twelve months from now, I believe that the expense report will become fully digital. Finance teams will review work that AI agents have already done, instead of filling in every field by hand or chasing colleagues for missing receipts.
The number I would watch is time to close the books. If our customers can close their month in under an hour, that is the clearest sign the admin has gone, because it measures the whole process from the first receipt to the final reconciliation.
A strong supporting signal would be the share of receipts captured without anyone having to chase them. Our goal is above 99%.
Editor’s Take: Ayham’s insights highlight Pemo’s progress, revealing impressive metrics: errors under 1% after a few cycles, a month-end close reduced to hours, and a goal of capturing over 99% of receipts without follow-ups.
E-invoicing is a key date, with a 30 October deadline for businesses earning AED 50 million or more to appoint a service provider and a 1 January go-live date. Pemo Communications contact said the company launched e-invoicing in November and that it will go live for customers in one to two weeks. Smaller businesses have until 31 March 2027, but that date is approaching.