Our mission
Hisab exists to get UAE residents out of debt — for free, in private, in their own language.
A Debt-Free UAE. By 2030, a million people in the UAE have used Hisab to pay down what they owe, and talking about debt here carries no shame.
What we believe
- 01
Debt is normal here. Silence about it isn't.
- 02
No sales. No ads. No one gets your numbers.
- 03
You don't owe anyone the story. You only owe the balance.
- 04
Being in debt isn't a character flaw. It's arithmetic. Arithmetic can be changed.
Why Hisab exists
Built by two people who needed it.
Hisab was started by James Ofori, a Ghanaian software engineer living in Abu Dhabi, who went through the stress of managing multiple debts in the UAE firsthand: juggling a bank loan, credit card arrears and car rental debt while trying to understand a financial system that wasn't built for expats. No tool existed that understood the UAE: the Al Etihad Credit Bureau, the travel ban risk, the financial remediation departments, the shame of asking for help. So he built one. Wisdom Ofoegbu joined as co-founder because he recognised every part of that story from his own life — his own debts, his own responsibilities, the same 2am arithmetic. James builds the product; Wisdom runs operations and the community. Neither of us is a bank, a lender or a debt-management firm, and that is the point.
The name حساب (Hisab) means accounts, reckoning, and settling in Arabic, Hindi, and Urdu simultaneously. It is the word every expat in this country already knows. Hisab starts with debt because that is where the pressure is most acute.
The name
A word every community here already uses.
Hisab means accounts, calculation and reckoning in Arabic, Hindi and Urdu. It already means what the app does.
The name
hisab
حساب · हिसाब · حساب
hi-SAAB · also written hisaab
noun · Arabic, Hindi, Urdu
Common uses
- 1
Math and money
Keeping track of numbers, paying bills, balancing a budget — managing accounts.
This is the ledger and the calculator: what you owe, in what order, and the month it ends.
- 2
Responsibility
To answer for something; to give an account of what you did and why.
It cuts both ways. The bank owes you a clear account of what you owe and why. You give yours in writing, on your own terms.
- 3
Reckoning
The moment when everything is counted and settled.
Not a judgement — a finish line. #DebtFreeUAE is that day.
Common phrases
- hisab lagana
- to work something out, to calculate
- The calculator. Type the numbers, get the date.
- hisab dena
- to give an account, to explain
- The email to your bank, drafted in your language.
- hisab barabar
- we're even; the account is settled
- The day the last balance reads zero.
- be-hisab
- countless, without limit
- What debt feels like before it is counted. Counting it is the first step.
The facts
Debt in the UAE, with sources.
Every number here carries a source and a date. If we cannot say where a figure came from, it does not go on the page.
How we build.
Hisab is built in the open and shaped by real UAE expat stories. Every feature has to earn its place against one test: does it reduce the fear around debt without asking you to trade away your privacy? That is why your financial data stays on your phone, why the app speaks four languages with full right-to-left care, and why the hardest features, like bank negotiation and Etihad Credit Bureau analysis, are free. We would rather ship one honest tool people trust than a dozen that harvest data.
#DebtFreeUAE
A badge for the finish line, not for the struggle.
- 01Debt is nobody's business but yours. Being debt-free is worth saying out loud, and #DebtFreeUAE is how you say it.
- 02People share milestones, never balances: started, steady, halfway, last card closed, debt-free. You choose what to share, and whether a number goes with it.
- 03Anonymous by default. "An expat in Sharjah" is a full name here, because a visa and an employer are real things to protect.
A template. Real cards appear only when real people choose to share them.
Last card closed
14 months#DebtFreeUAE
Debt today. Community now. Credit tomorrow.
Hisab starts with debt, and a private community of UAE expats going through it together is already here: pseudonymous, supportive, and honest. The next phase helps you build a credit profile. More to come.