Rally builds a pan-European fleet payments platform on Supabase

We could not have built this company without Supabase. If I had to go and build all these components myself, we wouldn't even have launched.

Introduction#

Rally is building a financial platform for fleets across Europe, starting with a modern fuel card that lets businesses pay for everything from fuel to tolls, parking, and EV charging.

Founded by former Stripe, Meta, and Booking product manager Thiago Peres, Rally serves medium to large European businesses with vehicles and drivers on the road, from delivery and service companies to quick-service restaurant chains.

What began as a solo project quickly became a fully licensed fintech company processing live transactions across Europe, all built on Supabase.

The challenge#

Rally set out to modernize fleet payments by simplifying expense management, reducing fraud, and giving fleet managers real-time visibility into spend.

To achieve that, they needed a backend that was robust, secure, and compliant, but also fast to build with. As a first-time builder returning to code after a decade in product management, Peres wanted to focus on the product experience rather than setting up infrastructure.

We're dealing with financial information. You can't afford data inconsistencies or downtime. We needed something resilient from day one.

Building a fintech platform typically means orchestrating databases, file storage, auth systems, and messaging queues under strict compliance requirements. For a small team, that complexity could have made Rally's launch impossible.

Choosing Supabase#

When Peres began experimenting with prototypes, Supabase stood out immediately.

It was very developer centric. The documentation was so good that it felt like part of the product. Everything worked together — database, storage, functions — in a cohesive way.

Supabase offered the power and reliability of Postgres combined with real-time APIs, Auth, Storage, and Edge Functions integrated out of the box. For a founder-CTO building solo, that cohesion made Rally possible.

Peres also valued Supabase's open-source model, which ensured flexibility and long-term control.

Having seen how lock-in works elsewhere, open source gave me peace of mind. If Supabase works, amazing, but if it didn't, I wouldn't be stuck.

Compared to alternatives like Firebase or traditional cloud databases, Supabase offered the right balance of scalability, transparency, and developer experience with a predictable cost structure that is critical for a fast-moving fintech startup.

The approach#

Rally's MVP moved from concept to production in just three months. Built entirely by Peres, the company's first banking-backed card went live to paying customers by January, just weeks after he began writing TypeScript and experimenting with Supabase.

Supabase now powers Rally's entire backend:

• Database and resilience – Postgres serves as the source of truth for every transaction, driver, and policy rule. Features like point-in-time recovery and managed load balancing give Rally confidence in handling critical financial data.
• Storage – Rally processes thousands of invoices and receipts, leveraging Supabase Storage and image transformations to manage and display documents securely.
• Realtime – Used in Rally's in-house messaging system, especially its WhatsApp-based DriverLink, which lets drivers submit receipts and mileage instantly.
• Auth – Manages user access across roles, from fleet managers to finance teams.

A key Rally innovation built on Supabase is Automatch, an AI-driven system that matches any WhatsApp-submitted receipt to the right transaction automatically.

Supabase made it easy to build Automatch. Storage handles receipts securely, and Postgres keeps every workflow in sync, which is critical when you're dealing with money.

The results#

In less than a year, Rally scaled from prototype to production fintech serving fleets across Europe without a dedicated backend team. Supabase helped Rally move fast, stay compliant, and deliver reliability to customers who depend on uninterrupted access to funds.

• Three months to market from first line of code to live card transactions
• Zero downtime during incidents, even during upstream AWS outages
• SOC 2 compliance in one week, supported by Supabase's infrastructure and security controls

One of the reasons we got our SOC 2 very, very quickly is because we were using Supabase. When all the requirements came on top of us, and also all the laws and regulations that we had to comply with, it was actually not very hard. We got our SOC 2 in a week. We did the work upfront to put the safeguards in place.

Rally continues to expand, adding EV charging payments and analytics dashboards powered by Supabase. The next phase includes sustainability benchmarking and AI-driven insights for fleet managers.

Every time I think of a feature I'd love Supabase to have, it shows up a few months later. It's become my database provider, period.

Why Supabase?#

Rally's journey reflects the reasons developers and fast-moving teams choose Supabase:

• Faster time to market – Supabase eliminates backend friction, enabling teams to build and ship faster
• Integrated suite of tools – Developers get a complete platform including Postgres, Auth, Storage, Realtime, and more
• Developer-centric experience – Comprehensive documentation and cohesive APIs make building intuitive
• Built for compliance – Infrastructure and security controls help fintech companies meet regulatory requirements
• Open-source foundation – Flexibility and control without vendor lock-in

Don't try to reinvent the wheel, especially on fintech. Security and compliance is really at the core of every fintech. If you go with a provider like Supabase, you can leverage a lot of things like the backups and distribution and infrastructure. That can give you a lot of peace of mind when something goes wrong.

Ready to build and scale with Supabase?#

Start your journey today at www.supabase.com