Alaan must diversify into lending and treasury

This risk says Alaan cannot stay a card cashback business forever. Today the company makes most of its money from interchange at roughly 170 to 190 basis points, far above the 0.3% cap Europe imposed on consumer credit cards, so any GCC move in that direction would hit its richest revenue stream. That pushes the model toward software fees, financing, and cash management products that monetize the same finance workflow in different ways.

• Alaan already sits on the raw material for this shift. Finance teams issue cards, upload receipts, process invoices, enforce budgets, and sync transactions into QuickBooks, NetSuite, and Microsoft Dynamics. That workflow creates spend history and cash flow visibility, which are the inputs needed to price working capital or offer treasury products.
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• The closest playbook comes from Ramp and Brex. Ramp added business accounts, investment accounts, and treasury automations so customers can hold operating cash and sweep excess balances into higher yield products. Brex combines spend management with checking and treasury accounts. Both show how card software expands into a broader finance stack once transaction data is in place.
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• The economic reason is simple. If interchange falls from roughly 1.7% to 1.9% toward developed market levels, a company needs new dollars from the same customer to keep serving cards, controls, onboarding, support, and bank partner costs. Subscription software raises fixed revenue, while lending and treasury add variable revenue tied to balances, loans, and payment activity.
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The next phase of the category is a move from expense tool to finance system of record. In the GCC, the winner is likely to be the company that starts with card controls, then layers on accounts payable, compliance, treasury, and working capital, so revenue depends less on interchange and more on owning the daily flow of business money.