UAE-Based Proptech Keyper Secures US$11 Million Series A Led By Austria-Based Speedinvest

UAE-based proptech startup Keyper has raised US$11 million in a Series A funding round as it scales its digital residential real estate platform across the UAE.

The round was led by Austria-based early-stage venture capital (VC) firm Speedinvest, with backing from NeoVentures, the corporate VC arm of the UAE’s Mashreq Bank, UAE-based VC firm Middle East Venture Partners, UAE-based investment fund Dubai Future District Fund, UAE-based real estate classifieds platform Property Finder, KSA-based lender Arab National Bank, UAE-based real estate developer Ellington Properties, Dar Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of the global design consultancy Sidara (formerly Dar Group), and UAE-based multi-family office Abbey Road Investment Group.

Founded by Omar Abu Innab and Walid Shihabi in Dubai in 2022, Keyper was launched with the aim to modernize residential rent payments by allowing tenants to spread annual rent into monthly installments, while enabling landlords to receive their rental income upfront. The company has since expanded its offering through its "rent now, pay monthly" solution as well as a broader digital platform for the real estate market.

“At its core, Keyper is a fully digitized operating platform for residential real estate,” Abu Innab, co-founder and CEO of Keyper, told Inc. Arabia. “We let tenants turn a lump-sum annual rent payment into manageable monthly payments through our ‘rent now, pay monthly’ offering, while giving landlords the option to receive their rental income upfront with default protection. Layer in property management tools and embedded financial services, and the mission is really one thing: replace a fragmented, check-based system with a single digital platform that works for everyone in the rental relationship.”

Abu Innab revealed that since its launch, Keyper—which has surpassed 100,000 app downloads—has facilitated more than $44 million in rental value, including $19 million in 2026 year-to-date. It now supports more than 10,500 properties valued at over $6 billion across 4,000 landlords. Keyper’s Series A round, which builds on its previously announced $30 million Sukuk financing agreement with global asset manager Franklin Templeton, will be used to expand the company's monthly rent payments platform, accelerate adoption among institutional landlords and large residential portfolios, introduce financing and liquidity solutions for property owners, and strengthen its broader ecosystem of property management and real estate services.

Keyper co-founders Walid Shihabi and Omar Abu Innab.

For Abu Innab, however, those expansion plans represent just one part of a much broader ambition. "There is still a long way to go for proptech and fintech in the digitization of real estate in the region and globally,” he said. “Rent alone in the UAE is the largest expense for most households and represents payments of tens of billions of dirhams a year; yet, most of it is still moving through post-dated checks, with no rewards or options to pay monthly. That’s going to change, and we’re leading the effort alongside our partners to create an impact by building the right infrastructure, educating landlords and tenants, and securing regulatory backing. That’s how we think about Keyper’s role. We don’t see ourselves as a rent app; we see ourselves as the infrastructure for how residential real estate gets paid for, managed, and eventually financed across the region. The long-term goal for Keyper is to digitize rental payments, property management, and the associated financial services, and make them easily accessible to landlords and tenants across the UAE."

It’s to Keyper's credit, then, that its progress to date has helped turn its long-term vision into an investable proposition. Abu Innab attributed the backing Keyper has secured to its demonstrated traction, supported by strategic partnerships with entities like Dubai Land Department, Abu Dhabi Advanced Real Estate Services, Property Finder, Visa, and Mashreq, which have helped integrate the platform into the UAE's residential real estate ecosystem. He also highlighted how the company’s investor base reflects confidence in multiple aspects of the business, spanning fintech and real estate infrastructure, as well as the UAE's broader growth story.

Abu Innab further noted that Keyper intentionally combined equity and debt financing to support different aspects of its growth strategy. “On the capital stack, equity and Sukuk financing play different roles for us,” he explained. “The Sukuk facility with Franklin Templeton is structured to fund the actual rent we advance to landlords, so it scales with transaction volume. The Series A is about building the platform, team, and product roadmap. Having both means we’re not forcing growth capital to do a working-capital job, or vice versa. It’s a more disciplined way to scale."

Keyper's financing strategy comes against the backdrop of an increasingly conservative fundraising environment amid geopolitical uncertainty in the region. But Abu Innab said that for Keyper, demonstrating measurable execution proved more important than relying on market narratives. "Fundraising is difficult for all founders, and we are no exception,” he explained. “Investors are more conservative these days, and rightfully so, especially with everything happening across the region. What made the difference for us was leading with numbers rather than a narrative: the volume we’re financing, the partnerships we’ve forged, the fact that this isn’t a hypothetical model, it’s already running at scale. That gave us conversations grounded in data rather than sentiment, which matters a lot when the macro backdrop is uncertain."

This experience has also shaped Abu Innab’s perspective on what founders should prioritize when approaching investors today. "My advice to other founders raising in the region right now: don’t lead with the story; lead with the proof of concept and traction,” he said. “Build the smallest version of your model that can show real numbers before you go out, and be upfront about risk rather than talking around it. The investors we spoke to weren’t looking for certainty about the region; they were looking for founders who understood the risk clearly and had built something resilient anyway."

Pictured in the lead image is Keyper co-founder and CEO Omar Abu Innab. All images courtesy Keyper.