Tabby Raises $233M at $6.5B Valuation to Push Beyond BNPL in Saudi, UAE
The buy now, pay later firm, profitable since 2023, will use the equity round to broaden its credit and money management products.
Tariq Benali Tariq Benali covers business and corporate news across the UAE and MENA for Anecdoted, tracking the deals, leadership moves and regulatory shifts behind the region's companies. tariq@anecdoted.com
Tabby has raised $233 million in equity, a round that values the buy now, pay later company at $6.5 billion. The fintech announced the financing in a company statement on Monday.
Blue Pool Capital led the round and had already backed Tabby. HSG, Wellington Management and Arbor Ventures also took part.
The money is meant to carry Tabby past the instalment payments business it built its name on. The company says it will move into wider credit and money management offerings in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, its two main markets.
Licences already in hand
Tabby has spent the past year collecting the regulatory permissions that expansion requires.
In Saudi Arabia it holds consumer finance and SME finance licences. Those allow it to write larger and longer-term consumer financing, and to extend working capital to businesses.
It also bought Tweeq, a digital wallet licensed by the Saudi Central Bank. That deal pushed Tabby into accounts, cards and money transfers.
In the UAE, a stored value facilities licence cleared the way for Tabby Cash. The product is pitched as a substitute for a traditional debit account, with no account or card fees. Customers can earn cashback on card spending and send money both inside the country and abroad.
The numbers behind the pitch
Tabby says it has been profitable since 2023 and processes more than $18 billion in annualised transaction volume.
It counts 25 million registered users and 70,000 business partners.
The equity round also carries a liquidity component for staff. Since 2023, Tabby share tenders have allowed current and former employees to sell more than $100 million worth of stock.
"People deserve more from their money," said Hosam Arab, Tabby's CEO and co-founder. He said the round would let the company "build further on that," adding that its approach to growth and discipline would not change.
said Hosam Arab, Tabby's CEO and co-founder. He said the round would let the company
Christopher Wu, chief investment officer at Blue Pool Capital, said Tabby had grown past payments into a platform for "managing, spending and growing money" across the region.
The transaction still needs regulatory clearances, including approval from the Saudi Central Bank.
Why the licence-to-product path matters
Tabby's plan hinges less on the size of the cheque than on what the licences let it do. BNPL is a thin-margin business tied to merchant checkout volume, and it is easy for rivals to copy. Consumer finance, SME lending, wallets and stored value accounts are harder to enter because regulators control who gets in. Tabby has now cleared that gate in both of its core markets, which turns a payments app into something closer to a bank-adjacent platform — and gives it a reason to raise at this valuation rather than defend the instalments niche.
