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This conversation follows Spare’s recently announced partnership with Rewa. Dalal AlRayes, co-founder and CEO, built the company as Open Finance infrastructure, the rails that let banks, fintechs and platforms securely share financial data and move money with a customer’s permission, not a business built around any single sector. It’s also behind a separate partnership with Xsquare on business payments, one more sign that Spare’s own ambitions sit across sectors rather than inside one.
Rent happens to be where that infrastructure is being tested most visibly right now. Dubai recorded 1.38 million tenancy contracts worth AED 126.4 billion in 2025, and a large share of that value still moves through post-dated cheques, a decades-old habit that has survived the city’s push toward paperless real estate. Spare’s Pay-By-Bank solution, running inside Rewa’s platform, is built to replace that habit with direct bank transfers.
Spare was founded in Riyadh in 2019 by AlRayes and co-founder Saurabh Shah, and operates across Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE and Kuwait. We asked AlRayes how a two-person idea about ‘seamless access to financial data’ became infrastructure for one of the region’s largest recurring payment habits, and what it actually takes to build a category with no local precedent to copy.
In Conversation with Dalal AlRayes
The CEO and co-founder of Spare sat down with UAE Fintech Vibes to share her insights on open finance in the UAE.
Can you tell us how Spare came to life? What was the moment you decided this needed to exist?
Dalal AlRayes: When I moved back from the US, one thing immediately stood out: the gap in financial technology and connectivity across the region. I had seen firsthand how fintech was transforming everyday financial services elsewhere, but in MENA, much of the infrastructure simply wasn’t there yet.
Around that time, I met my co-founder, Saurabh, through a mutual friend. Based in the UK, he had a front-row seat to the wave of fintech innovation sweeping across Europe. We spent countless hours discussing what it would take to build something equally transformative for the MENA region.
As we explored different ideas and went through several iterations, a clear pattern emerged. Every great financial product depended on one critical foundation: seamless access to financial data. That’s when we realised the real opportunity was to build the open banking infrastructure that would power the next generation of financial companies. That insight became the foundation for Spare.
For someone who has never heard of Open Finance before, how would you explain what Spare does in simple terms?
Dalal AlRayes: Open Finance makes it easy for people and businesses to securely connect all their financial accounts in one place. Spare provides the technology that links banks, financial institutions, and fintechs, allowing them to securely share data and enable payments, with the customer’s permission. This makes it possible to build faster, smarter, and more seamless financial products and services.
Why did you choose to partner with Rewa specifically, and why is rental payments the right place to start for Open Finance in the UAE?
Dalal AlRayes: Rewa is tackling one of the biggest pain points in the UAE real estate market – rental payments that still rely heavily on post-dated cheques. We saw a natural fit between their vision and Spare’s Pay-By-Bank solution, which makes account-to-account payments instant, secure, and seamless. Rental payments are the ideal place to introduce Open Finance because the friction is so visible and costly. In 2025 alone, Dubai recorded 1.38 million tenancy contracts worth AED 126.4 billion, and a huge share of that value still moves through post-dated cheques. Open Finance replaces that with instant, account-to-account payments, real-time visibility, and a fully digital audit trail.
As a co-founder and CEO building a fintech company in the Middle East, what has that journey looked like for you personally?
Dalal AlRayes: It’s been an exciting and challenging journey. The region is on the cusp of a boom in financial services, and we’re helping build the infrastructure that will enable the next generation of financial products. Because we’re creating something that’s never really existed in the region before, there’s no playbook. Every new partnership and product comes with new challenges, and we’re often solving problems in real time alongside our partners. It’s a challenging and highly rewarding journey.
What is one thing you want tenants and landlords in Dubai to know about how this technology will make their lives easier?
Dalal AlRayes: Spare’s Pay-by-Bank integration with Rewa allows tenants to automate their rent payments directly from their bank accounts. No cheques or credit cards required anymore. For tenants, it’s a simpler, more convenient way to pay rent. For landlords and property managers, it means faster collections, better payment visibility, lower processing costs, and less risk of bounced cheques or failed transactions.
Editor’s Take: Surprisingly, in the UAE, the post-dated cheque method has doubled as a landlord’s security instrument, real recourse if a tenant stops paying. It will be interesting to see how Spare x Rewa partnership will replace that function once the cheque is gone and whether landlords used to that old method are willing to trade it for speed.