A UAE-Backed Fintech Places Its Bet on India's Corporate Spending Frontier
Peko, a corporate expense platform backed by an Abu Dhabi conglomerate, unveiled its India launch on July 23, standing on a stage in Ahmedabad with ambitions to reach 50 million small and medium businesses in a market already crowded with homegrown rivals.
The announcement at the Investopia Global conference marked an unusual entry: the first international corporate card player backed by a Gulf fund to push into India's booming spend management sector. It's a segment where local startups like RazorpayX, EnKash, and Volopay have been racing to sign up companies tired of reimbursing employees from petty cash or chasing down taxi receipts.
Peko's pitch centers on real-time visibility into corporate spending, with virtual and physical cards that let finance teams set limits by employee or department. Receipts get captured automatically, expenses categorized without manual entry, according to the company's India website and product materials released late last year. The platform hooks into QuickBooks and similar accounting tools through a centralized dashboard, aiming to simplify the headache of tracking who spent what and where.
But Peko doesn't issue cards itself. According to the company's FAQ page, Peko operates as a technology platform and does not provide regulated financial services directly, routing transactions through licensed bank partners whose identities remain undisclosed for the India market. That model—common among fintechs navigating regulatory constraints—lets Peko avoid the capital requirements and compliance burdens of becoming a regulated financial institution.
The India push follows a significant ownership shift. International Holding Company, an Abu Dhabi conglomerate listed on the local stock exchange, acquired a 70 percent stake in Peko Holdings Limited in December, per a securities filing. Two months earlier, Peko Platforms Private Limited had been incorporated in New Delhi, receiving INR 2.70 crore (about $290,000) in foreign direct investment from its parent, Indian government investment records show.
Kashif Ahmad Khan, Peko's founder and CEO, framed the India expansion in sweeping terms on LinkedIn: "We have bold ambitions to help 50 million SMEs run and grow their businesses on one unified platform called Peko India." Whether those ambitions translate into market share depends on pricing, bank partnerships, and credit appetite—details the company has kept largely under wraps.
Peko's India pricing page lists two monthly plans at ₹999 and ₹2,999, though specifics on card fees, transaction charges, or credit limits aren't spelled out. That opacity might frustrate potential customers accustomed to transparent fee schedules from competitors. The company also advertises a white-label model aimed at Indian banks, suggesting it hopes to distribute through financial institutions rather than building a direct-to-business customer base from scratch.
The competitive landscape Peko faces is formidable and fast-moving. RazorpayX, the payments giant's corporate spend arm, relaunched its card product in mid-2025 with Mastercard, RBL Bank, and Yes Bank backing it. The company offered credit lines reaching ₹2 crore for Indian startups, according to its announcement at the time. EnKash claimed to have built India's first unified corporate card ecosystem that November. Earlier this year, ProXpense teamed with Pine Labs on co-branded prepaid cards, the Times of India reported.
Volopay and Kodo remain active, with Volopay still updating product documentation as recently as July, based on its website. Each player is chasing the same prize: India's sprawling MSME sector, which the government pegs at around 92 million enterprises. That figure comes from MSME Secretary Bharat Khera in an August interview with the Economic Times, roughly in line with the 91.6 million Udyam registrations the Press Information Bureau had reported weeks earlier.
The market opportunity looks substantial on paper. PwC projected in late 2025 that India's credit card transactions would balloon to 13 billion annually by fiscal 2030, totaling ₹54 trillion in value. A 2023 estimate from Frost & Sullivan, cited in Zaggle's IPO prospectus, sized the spend management software and services market at ₹131 billion by 2027. Whether those projections hold depends on how quickly Indian businesses digitize their expense workflows and how willing banks are to extend credit to smaller firms with limited financial histories.
Peko arrives in India with some operational history in the Gulf. The company previously partnered with payment processor Telr and Ras Al Khaimah Economic Zone in the UAE. Reem Finance provided what's known as BIN sponsorship for Peko's UAE corporate card program this summer, according to LinkedIn posts from the company.
The India operation maintains two registered entities. Peko Payments Private Limited, set up in Bengaluru in early 2022, exists alongside the newer Delhi subsidiary. Corporate filings list Khan and Asif Rasool as directors of both. Mobile apps for iOS and Android were updated in August, reaching version 2.18 on Apple's App Store and updating shortly after on Google Play.
What remains unclear is how Peko will differentiate itself beyond the Gulf pedigree. The core features it advertises—spend controls, receipt capture, accounting integrations—are table stakes in a market where every competitor offers some version of the same promise. Success may hinge less on technology and more on the strength of its banking relationships, the credit it can unlock for customers, and whether small businesses see enough value to switch from entrenched rivals or traditional corporate cards.
For now, Peko is betting that India's sheer scale—and the inefficiencies still embedded in how millions of businesses manage expenses—will create room for another player, even one arriving late to a party already underway.
