Keyper, a UAE startup that lets tenants pay rent monthly while landlords receive annual payments upfront, has raised $11 million in Series A funding as it scales a platform targeting one of the Gulf’s largest yet least-digitized financial markets.
The round was led by Speedinvest and included NeoVentures, the corporate venture capital arm of Mashreq Bank, alongside Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP), Dubai Future District Fund, Property Finder, Arab National Bank, Ellington Properties, Dar Ventures and Abbey Road Investment Group, the company said Thursday.
The equity raise follows a previously announced $30 million sukuk financing facility from Franklin Templeton, giving Keyper additional capital to fund rent advances while expanding its suite of financial products.
Founded in 2022 by Omar Abu Innab and Walid Al Saqqaf, Keyper is betting that the UAE’s rental market is ripe for modernization. While tenants in many countries pay rent monthly, renters across much of the UAE are still expected to settle annual leases using one to four post-dated cheques. Keyper bridges that gap by paying landlords upfront and allowing tenants to spread payments into monthly installments through its digital platform.
The company has evolved beyond rent financing into what it describes as an operating system for residential real estate, integrating rent payments, property management software and embedded financial services for landlords and property managers.
The fresh capital will be used to expand its monthly rent payments platform, deepen adoption among institutional landlords and large residential portfolios, introduce financing and liquidity products for property owners, and broaden its digital real estate ecosystem.
Keyper says it has financed more than $44 million in rental payments since launch, with $19 million processed in the first half of 2026 alone. Its platform now supports more than 10,500 residential properties valued at over $6 billion, serves around 4,000 landlords, and has surpassed 100,000 app downloads.
The company has also secured partnerships with the Dubai Land Department, Abu Dhabi Advanced Real Estate Services (ADRES), Property Finder, Visa and Mashreq, positioning itself within broader government and private-sector efforts to digitize the country’s housing market.
The investment underscores growing investor interest in fintech-enabled real estate infrastructure across the Gulf, where digital payment adoption continues to reshape traditionally manual sectors.
Rather than focusing solely on tenant convenience, investors increasingly see rental payment platforms as gateways to larger financial opportunities. Once recurring rental cash flows become digital and predictable, they can support lending, securitization and institutional investment products tied to residential property income.
“Today, the Keyper platform brings together payments, financing and property management, solving real problems for all sides of the market,” Rana Abdel Latif, a partner at Speedinvest, said in a statement.
ANB Capital Chief Executive Officer Khalid S. Alghamdi said Dubai recorded more than AED100 billion ($27.2 billion) in tenancy contracts last year, yet most rental payments are still made through post-dated cheques.
“This is not a rent app,” Alghamdi said. “It is the infrastructure layer for residential real estate, and whoever owns those rails will sit at the centre of how an entire market pays, borrows and invests against its homes.”
For Keyper, the latest funding provides both growth capital and strategic backing from investors spanning banking, venture capital, real estate development and property marketplaces—positioning the startup to compete for a larger share of the UAE’s rapidly digitizing property market.