AI spend management

Pluto

Pluto set out to empty the office cash vault

Three friends from Shopify, Cash App and an open-banking startup found Middle East companies still running on office cash. Pluto puts that spending on company cards and now uses AI for much of the bookkeeping.

Spotlight Images: Pluto

Members of the Pluto team in matching branded jackets on a rooftop
Founders
Mo Aziz
Mohammed Ridwan
Nayeem Zen
HQ
Dubai, UAE
Founded
2021
Sector
Fintech, spend management
Website
Visit Pluto

Born Capital is an investor in Pluto.

The story

A vault in every office

Before raising money, Mo Aziz, Mohammed Ridwan and Nayeem Zen spoke with a few hundred businesses across the Middle East and North Africa, and one habit came up again and again: offices kept a cash vault and handed staff loose notes every day. Credit was hard to get, so a business often ran on one card linked to its whole bank account, with no limits, held by the owner or the financial controller. Elsewhere, staff paid costs themselves and waited for month-end to be repaid. Cards issued in the United States were no answer, Aziz told TechCrunch: merchants often blocked them to avoid fraud.

Three old friends

The founders were friends first. Ridwan grew up in Dubai, studied engineering at Waterloo in Canada and joined Shopify in 2016, where he met Zen. Both later worked at Cash App. Aziz, born in the UAE, had known Ridwan for more than a decade and had co-founded Dapi, an open-banking startup. Founded in October 2021, Pluto left stealth four months later, raising a $6 million seed round. Aziz said 35 prospective customers were already in its pipeline, without any marketing. One early backer saw a parallel with Careem, which he said beat Uber in the region by building for cash.

Pluto’s co-founders Nayeem Zen, Mo Aziz and Mohammed Ridwan in black Pluto sweatshirts
From left: Nayeem Zen, Mo Aziz and Mohammed Ridwan.

A card for everyone

The first product was the card. Companies could issue unlimited virtual and physical cards, each with its own limit, and staff filed receipts over WhatsApp. At Platinum Heritage, a Dubai desert-safari operator, everyone had shared one card while petty cash ran on a manual float, and Pluto's case study says spending only showed up when the month-end statement arrived. With individual cards, each purchase set off a WhatsApp prompt to upload the receipt on the spot. Another Pluto case study says the finance team at Keyper, a Dubai rent-payments company, won back more than 15 hours a month. In November 2023, at Abu Dhabi Finance Week, Pluto signed a deal to use Mastercard exclusively for its payments.

AI on the books

The newest layer works after the purchase. PlutoAI, the company's AI bookkeeper, codes each card transaction, picking general-ledger and tax codes from past entries, the receipt and data on the merchant, then syncs the result to Xero, QuickBooks, NetSuite or Zoho. A photographed receipt is read line by line and matched to its transaction. When a receipt is missing, the software chases the employee. Supplier invoices are read automatically and checked for duplicates. In September 2025 Pluto launched Pluto Control: budgets, purchase requests that route themselves for approval, and spend questions answered in plain English.

Through the banks

In September 2024, at Riyadh's 24 Fintech conference, Pluto announced a partnership with neoleap by Al Rajhi Bank to take its platform into Saudi Arabia. Weeks before its next round, Ridwan announced that spend under management had passed AED 1 billion, about $270 million. In January 2025 Pluto closed a $4.1 million pre-Series A from existing and new investors, to deepen its work with banks and grow in Saudi Arabia. Pluto Connect lets a bank offer Pluto's cards and spend tools to its own business clients. Pluto said then that one bank partner, among the world's largest and not named, served more than 30,000 small businesses this way.

Visit getpluto.com

AI at Pluto

PlutoAI, which Pluto calls an AI finance team, handles the bookkeeping behind card purchases and supplier invoices. It is built to do the coding, matching and receipt chasing that finance teams used to do by hand.

  • Codes card and spend transactions to GL and tax codes, departments and budgets
  • Matches receipts sent by photo, WhatsApp, SMS or email, and chases missing ones
  • Reads supplier invoices, captures vendor and invoice details, and flags duplicates

The founders

Milestones

  1. 2021Oct

    Mo Aziz, Mohammed Ridwan and Nayeem Zen found Pluto to replace office cash

  2. 2022Feb

    Leaves stealth with a $6M seed round

  3. 2023Nov

    Signs exclusive payments partnership with Mastercard at Abu Dhabi Finance Week

  4. 2024Jul

    Announces a #1 G2 ranking for procure-to-pay in EMEA (Summer 2024 reports)

  5. 2024Sep

    Announces neoleap by Al Rajhi Bank partnership at 24 Fintech in Riyadh

  6. 2025Jan

    Raises a $4.1M pre-Series A, weeks after reporting AED 1 billion in spend under management

  7. 2025Sep

    Launches Pluto Control: budgets, purchase approvals and AI spend questions

Further reading

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