UAE-Headquartered Receiptable Closes Funding Round Backed By Regional Investors

Bahrain-born and UAE headquarted fintech Receiptable has raised a new funding round led by the UAE-based venture capital firm 21 Ventures, with participation from investors like UAE-based Oraseya Capital and UAE-based AngelsDeck VC, alongside follow-on investment from the UK-based alternative asset manager Salica Investments.  

Founded by Chris Purdie in Bahrain in 2023, Receiptable is a fintech enterprise that empowers retailers and financial institutions to drive higher customer engagement through frictionless digital receipts. In an interview with Inc. Arabia, Purdie told us that the idea for Receiptable emerged from his decade-long experience scaling payments and fintech businesses. While transaction methods became increasingly seamless and secure, in-store interactions exposed a persistent gap in the post-payment experience, shaping Receiptable’s focus on rethinking the role of receipts within the checkout journey—one that found a fitting base in the GCC.

"Our mission is to turn receipts into every retailer’s number one customer engagement channel," Purdie explained. "A combination of the growth rates of in-store payments in the region, the enthusiasm from regional financial institutions, and the overlap of retail footprints, made starting in the GCC a no-brainer. We made our first hires and opened our first office in Bahrain at the start of 2024, before expanding to the UAE last year, which is where the company is headquartered today."

That early framing shaped the direction of the Receiptable platform as it moved from concept to execution. The company today works with retailers across sectors such as grocery, food and beverage, and fashion, supporting post-checkout engagement and insight generation beyond the point of sale. “Our solution reimagines the receipt, transforming it from a simple proof of purchase into an interactive digital touchpoint," Purdie said. "We offer a suite of tools that allows retailers to drive more social media following, gain more reviews and convert anonymous customers into loyalty members. Traditionally, marketing on paper receipts delivered very low conversion rates for our partners and provided no means of tracking performance. By switching to Receiptable, they’re able to start a relationship with every customer that walks through the door, all whilst saving money on paper, and reducing their environmental impact." 

As Receiptable now looks to scale its offering, Purdie noted that evolving retail behavior across the region is shaping how digital receipt solutions are adopted, particularly at the point of sale, where speed and simplicity matter most. “The pattern is pretty similar across the region, with retailers generally falling into one of two camps," he noted. "Some are stubbornly sticking to paper, whilst others have tried to implement cumbersome email-based solutions. That tends to create friction at the checkout in an age when customers expect an experience just as smooth as the ones they have online. Certain big retail groups have started sending receipts to their own loyalty apps now, which works well. Yet we certainly don’t view this as competition; we offer such partners a single receipts platform that can deliver across these existing loyalty channels, or straight to a customer’s mobile browser if they’re not already in the loyalty scheme. We’ve seen great results helping these brands to use our solution as a tool to convert new customers into loyalty app users.” 

That evolving market context also helped define the milestones that supported Receiptable’s latest funding round. The new capital is set to support the rollout of Receiptable’s one-tap digital receipt solution, alongside continued investment in product development, team expansion, and deeper collaboration with retail groups and payments acquirers across the UAE and the wider Middle East. “We’ve been lucky to hire some extremely talented individuals with deep knowledge and experience in both the payments and retail worlds," Purdie added. "We were able to refine our target customer and distribution model quickly, and unlock partnerships with some of the biggest payments acquirers and, in turn, some of major GCC-wide retail groups. And the growth opportunity of the market speaks for itself; in-store shopping continues to grow at pace in the region, and the shift towards becoming a genuinely digital society is stark, with card/wallet payments continuing to grow at 20 percent year-on-year in the GCC.”  

Reflecting on his entrepreneurial trajectory with Receiptable, Purdie offered his peers in the startup domain advice shaped by lessons learned early on his own journey. “Aim to be exceptional at doing one thing, for a single customer, and then obsess over talking to as many of those customers as possible," Purdie said. "Be prepared to frequently make mini-pivots until you have that one thing, for that one type of customer, that they can’t live without. In the early days, we fell into the trap of trying to serve too many customers; being quite good at many things for many people was going to get us nowhere."

Pictured in the lead image is Receiptable founder Chris Purdie. Image courtesy Receiptable.