UAE-based corporate card solution Alaan has signed a five-year deal with Visa to digitise expense management processes for businesses. The partnership aims to leverage Visa's extensive payment network, VisaNet, along with Alaan's AI-driven spend management system in a bid to offer improved financial control and visibility to businesses across the region, aligning with the cashless society initiatives of the UAE and Saudi Arabian governments.

According to khaleejtimes.com, in the context of a shifting landscape in corporate expense handling in the Middle East, Visa's involvement reflects its commitment to shaping the region's payment and money movement future. For Alaan, this collaboration signifies a significant step forward in its mission to improve its platform for progressive businesses in the Middle East, reinforcing its dedication to technology-driven solutions for managing business spending. Benefits from Alaan’s clients The partnership is expected to benefit Alaan's customers by enhancing efficiency, security, and flexibility in corporate spending management.

With over 500 organisations already using Alaan's platform, his partnership is positioned to support its expansion plans. Real-time tracking, automated reconciliations, and streamlined expense management are among the improvements facilitated by this partnership. Officials from Visa’s highlighted the company's commitment to forming strategic partnerships that support the region's payments ecosystem and deliver innovative corporate solutions.

Alaan representatives expressed excitement about the alliance, emphasising its potential to transform financial processes and drive efficiency and growth for customers in the Middle East. Additionally, joint marketing initiatives between Alaan and Visa aim to accelerate the adoption of advanced spend management solutions in the region, supporting economic growth and digital transformation efforts. Other partnerships involving Visa In March 2024, Visa revealed the expansion of its global value-added solutions businesses with the launch of three new AI-powered risk and fraud prevention services.

These products are set to be part of the end-to-end Visa Protect suite, being developed in order to reduce fraud and threads across immediate account-to-account (A2A) and card-not-present payments (CNP), as well as transactions that are taken both on and off Visa’s network. In February 2024, Emirates Skywards, which is the loyalty programme of Emirates and flydubai, announced an exclusive, multi-year strategic partnership with Visa. According to globaldata.com, the partnership aimed to support the collaboration between Emirates Skywards and co-brand issuer partners across the GCC, as well as enable the loyalty programme to work more closely with its partners on personalisation and data-driven decision making.

The collaboration also aimed to improve digitisation and innovation and increase opportunities for more personalised rewards and products on co-brand card propositions. .