Why cross-border was the milestone we had to build toward
By Dalal AlRayes, Co-founder and CEO, Spare
When we executed the first international Open Finance payment in the GCC, it wasn't a moment that came out of nowhere. It was the result of a deliberate build, one decision at a time, toward something we believed had to exist.
What this opens up matters more than the announcement itself. It represents a meaningful shift in what Open Finance infrastructure can do for businesses operating across the region, and it's worth explaining how we got here and why the sequencing mattered.
The problem we kept hearing
From early on, one of the most consistent things we heard from businesses across the region was that cross-border payments were a bottleneck. Not just expensive, though they are, but operationally painful, with multiple banking relationships, fragmented processes, and limited visibility built on infrastructure that wasn't designed for the way regional businesses actually move money today.
The GCC is a region defined by cross-border commerce, from remittance corridors to international trade to businesses with customers and suppliers spread across multiple markets. Yet the payment infrastructure underneath all of that hadn't kept pace with the commercial reality it was supposed to support, and businesses were absorbing the cost and complexity of that gap, often without a clear alternative.
Building in the right order
Cross-border wasn't a feature we added when the opportunity arose. It was a direction we built toward from the foundation up, and that meant getting the domestic infrastructure right first.
We built regulatory oversight across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain, bank connectivity across multiple institutions, and consent flows aligned to each market's regulatory standard, so that regulated payment initiation was something merchants could rely on at scale. Much of that work was invisible from the outside, but it was the prerequisite for everything that followed. International payments on Open Finance rails need a solid domestic foundation underneath them. You can't extend infrastructure across borders reliably if it isn't performing within them, so building it in that order mattered.
What businesses gain from this
Through AlTareq and in partnership with our bank partners, this brought together two things: the regulatory infrastructure the Central Bank of the UAE has built, and the commercial infrastructure we've been building at Spare.
For businesses, what this opens up is genuinely new. Payment initiation across borders, through regulated Open Finance rails, now works with the same simplicity as a domestic transfer. For remittance businesses, merchants collecting internationally, and platforms managing recurring cross-border flows, this changes both the economics and the operational experience. The friction that has historically defined cross-border payments in the region no longer has to be a given.
Why this matters for the region
Cross-border interoperability is one of the most important pillars for financial infrastructure in the GCC, a region shaped by significant remittance flows, multi-market financial groups, and growing intra-regional trade.
This shows that the infrastructure to support it is being built now, within a regulated framework, by licensed providers working alongside banks and central banks. That combination of regulatory rigour and commercial execution is what gives it durability.
What comes next
This opens up a different conversation about what financial infrastructure in the GCC can look like. Cross-border payment infrastructure that is regulated, reliable, and accessible through a single integration changes the landscape for businesses that have long treated international payments as a necessary complexity rather than a strategic capability.
The region has the regulatory foundations, the commercial appetite, and increasingly the infrastructure to support a more connected financial ecosystem. The work of building it continues.