Rasmal Ventures Invests in Yuno's $45M Series B for GCC Expansion

Juan Pablo Ortega and Julián Núñez, Yuno co-founders

Qatar-based Rasmal Ventures has invested in Yuno’s $45 million Series B, adding a strategic regional investor to the latest funding round for the AI-native payments infrastructure company.

The round was led by Global PayTech Ventures, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Tiger Global, QuantumLight Capital, Monashees, Kaszek, and Endeavor Catalyst. Rasmal joined alongside GrowthX Capital, one of its own investors, and Further Ventures, the Abu Dhabi-based sovereign-backed investment firm.

For Rasmal, the investment reflects its stated strategy of supporting companies entering and scaling across Gulf markets before deploying capital. Rather than acting solely as a financial investor, the firm positions itself as a regional operating partner for international founders.

That approach is particularly relevant to Yuno, which has already established a foothold in the Gulf through its Qatar operations and Saudi Arabia expansion.

How Is Yuno Building Its Payments Footprint Across the GCC?

Yuno has been expanding its regional infrastructure through a combination of local regulatory approvals, payment-rail integrations, and partnerships.

In April 2026, Yuno Payments Arabia received Payment Technical Service Provider (PTSP) certification from the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) under the Kingdom’s eCommerce Merchant Service Provider framework. The certification enables Yuno to provide technical payment services to merchants and payment partners operating in Saudi Arabia.

Its regional strategy also includes partnerships that connect Yuno to local payment infrastructure and consumers:

• Tap Payments opened access to local payment rails including Mada, KNET, and NAPS across the six GCC markets.
• A partnership with Tabby connects Yuno to more than 25 million shoppers across Saudi Arabia and the UAE through buy-now-pay-later capabilities.
• Yuno has established a regional office in Qatar, giving the company a base from which to expand across Gulf markets.

The combination gives Yuno access to an increasingly fragmented but rapidly digitizing payments landscape, where merchants need local payment methods while maintaining a single global technology stack.

Why Is the GCC Payments Market Strategic for Yuno?

The timing of Yuno’s expansion aligns with rapid growth in real-time and digital payments across the Middle East.

According to ACI Worldwide, the Middle East was the world's fastest-growing real-time payments market in its 2023 research. Regional real-time payment transactions were projected to increase from 675 million in 2022 to 2.6 billion by 2027, representing a 30.6% CAGR.

More recent ACI research projected that real-time payment transactions in the Middle East would rise from 855 million in 2023 to 3 billion by 2028, representing a 28.8% CAGR.

Saudi Arabia is particularly important to this growth story. ACI reported 352 million real-time payment transactions in Saudi Arabia in 2022, with volumes forecast to reach 1.2 billion by 2027, representing a 26.1% CAGR.

This creates a strong strategic fit for Yuno. As payment volumes grow, merchants increasingly need infrastructure capable of handling different cards, wallets, account-to-account systems, alternative payment methods, fraud controls, and regulatory requirements across individual markets.

Yuno's proposition is to abstract that complexity through a single technology layer.

What Does Yuno Offer Merchants, Banks, and Wallets?

Yuno describes itself as an AI-native operating system for global commerce, providing financial infrastructure to enterprise merchants, banks, and wallets.

Through a single API, the platform connects customers to more than 1,000 payment methods, 460 integrations, and 190 countries. Its technology supports payment orchestration, intelligent routing, checkout, fraud prevention, and other financial infrastructure capabilities.

The company's current platform reach includes:

Yuno Metric	Scale
Payment methods	1,000+
Integrations	460+
Countries	190+
Transaction volume recovered	$5B+
Authorisation-rate improvement	~5%
Processing costs saved for customers	$500M+

Over the past year, Yuno says it recovered more than $5 billion in otherwise-failed transaction volume for merchants on its network, increased authorisation rates by approximately 5%, and saved customers more than $500 million in processing costs.

Global brands using Yuno include McDonald’s, NetEase Games, GoFundMe, inDrive, and Rappi.

What Does Rasmal Ventures See in Yuno’s GCC Strategy?

For Rasmal, Yuno's existing regional infrastructure reduces one of the biggest challenges facing global fintech companies entering the Gulf: becoming sufficiently local in each market.

Soumaya Ben Beya Dridje, Partner at Rasmal Ventures, said:

“The hardest problem in payments is being genuinely local everywhere, and Yuno has solved it at global scale, which is exactly why it resonates in our region.”

She added that the Gulf's emerging trade corridors and rapidly developing payment infrastructure create a natural opportunity for Yuno, particularly as the company combines global scale with local payment rails and regulatory capabilities.

The investment therefore reflects more than exposure to a growing fintech market. It gives Rasmal a position in infrastructure supporting cross-border commerce between the Gulf and international markets.

Why Does Qatar Matter to Yuno’s Regional Expansion?

Qatar provides Yuno with a strategic base for its broader GCC expansion.

GrowthX Capital founder Hamad Al Hajri highlighted the connection between Yuno CEO Juan Pablo Ortega's previous entrepreneurial experience and the company's ambitions in the Gulf.

“I have known the founder Juan Pablo since his Rappi journey, Colombia’s first unicorn. I believe he is building his next unicorn with Yuno, this time from the GCC, with Qatar as its regional hub.”

For Yuno, Qatar can serve as a regional operating base while Saudi Arabia provides access to one of the Middle East's largest and fastest-growing payments markets.

The strategy also reflects a broader shift in Gulf fintech: regional expansion increasingly depends on combining international technology with local regulatory approvals, payment rails, and commercial partnerships.

What Is Yuno’s Strategy After the Series B?

Yuno CEO and Co-Founder Juan Pablo Ortega said the company is using the Series B to support customer growth while extending its competitive position and maintaining a path toward profitability.

“Most companies raise a Series B to buy growth. We're raising ours to meet our customers' growth, and extend our lead, with a clear line to profitability in the year ahead.”

That emphasis suggests Yuno is entering its next stage with a focus on operating leverage rather than expansion at any cost.

Its existing footprint — 190+ countries, 1,000+ payment methods, and 460+ integrations — gives the company a global base, while its 2026 Saudi certification and GCC partnerships provide a foundation for deeper regional penetration.

What Does the Rasmal-Yuno Investment Signal for GCC Fintech?

The investment is the latest example of Gulf investors seeking to create two-way access between regional capital and international technology companies.

For Rasmal, the Yuno deal extends its strategy across MENA, Türkiye, and Asia, while giving the firm exposure to payment infrastructure at a time when the Gulf is investing heavily in digital commerce and real-time payment systems.

For Yuno, the partnership provides more than capital. Rasmal's regional network and Qatar presence can support the company's efforts to localize its global payments infrastructure as GCC merchants, banks, wallets, and consumers increasingly move toward digital and real-time payment experiences.

The strategic logic is straightforward: Yuno brings global payment infrastructure to the Gulf, while Rasmal brings local market access to Yuno.

With Middle Eastern real-time payment volumes projected to reach 3 billion transactions by 2028, the region represents an increasingly important growth market for payment infrastructure providers operating at global scale.

 

 

FAQs

1. What is Yuno?
Yuno is an AI-native payments infrastructure company that provides a single API connecting businesses to payment methods, payment providers, fraud prevention, and other financial infrastructure. It operates across 190+ countries with more than 1,000 payment methods and 460 integrations.

2. How much did Yuno raise in its Series B?
Yuno raised $45 million in Series B funding, with Global PayTech Ventures leading the round. Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global, QuantumLight Capital, Monashees, Kaszek, Endeavor Catalyst, Rasmal Ventures, GrowthX Capital, and Further Ventures participated.

3. Why did Rasmal Ventures invest in Yuno?
Rasmal Ventures invested to support Yuno's expansion across the GCC and to gain exposure to global payments infrastructure. The investment aligns with Rasmal's model of helping international companies establish regional market access before deploying capital.

4. What is Yuno’s presence in Saudi Arabia?
In April 2026, Yuno Payments Arabia received Payment Technical Service Provider certification from the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA), allowing it to provide technical payment services to merchants and payment partners in Saudi Arabia.

5. How fast is the Middle East real-time payments market growing?
ACI Worldwide projects Middle East real-time payment transactions to grow from 855 million in 2023 to 3 billion in 2028, representing a 28.8% CAGR. This makes the region one of the fastest-growing real-time payments markets globally.