Tap Payments
Payment gateway founded in Kuwait in 2014 by Ali Abulhasan, licensed across the six GCC states and Egypt. It says it serves more than 120,000 businesses through a single integration for local schemes, cards and wallets.
Industry: Online payment gateway and acquiring | Location: Saudi Arabia | Founded: 2014
About Tap Payments
Tap Payments is a payment institution and technology provider for the Middle East and North Africa. Businesses connect to it through one integration to accept local payment schemes such as mada in Saudi Arabia, KNET in Kuwait, Benefit in Bahrain, NAPS in Qatar, OmanNet and the UAE's Jaywan, alongside international cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay and buy-now-pay-later options.
The company says it was founded by Ali Abulhasan in 2014, and its releases describe it as founded in Kuwait; Forbes Middle East and Mubasher date its start in Kuwait to 2013. Abulhasan, a computer science graduate of the University of Jordan, is co-founder and chief executive. Other executives named in its announcements include Ahmad Alwazzan, managing director for the UAE, and Anwar Marafi, group head of business and financial institutions.
Its products cover online acceptance, checkout, billing and payment links, with plug-ins, APIs and SDKs for developers, and in Kuwait it also offers point-of-sale devices. It lists offices in Kuwait, Riyadh, Dubai, Doha, Manama, Muscat, Cairo and London, and as of October 2026 says it serves more than 120,000 businesses across the region. Merchants it has named include flydubai, Talabat, Careem, Trendyol and Lulu Hypermarkets.
Tap has provided electronic payment services in Saudi Arabia under Saudi Central Bank licensing since 2018 and holds an electronic payment service provider licence from the Central Bank of Kuwait. It obtained a payment service provider licence from Qatar Central Bank in 2024 and, in April 2025, a Retail Payment Services licence from the Central Bank of the UAE, which it said completed its approvals across the GCC. In 2018 it signed agreements with National Bank of Kuwait and Boubyan Bank.
Forbes Middle East ranked Tap 24th on its Fintech 50 list in 2024 and 18th in 2025, and the company reported a 13th-place ranking in 2026.
In September 2026 Tap and HSBC Kuwait launched a card-acceptance service for HSBC's business and corporate clients in Kuwait that runs on Tap's payment rails and gives finance teams one view of transactions and settlements.
Leadership
- Ali Abulhasan, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
- Sultan AlOnazi, Chief Executive Officer (as reported by Mubasher; scope not stated)
- Ahmad Alwazzan, Managing Director, UAE
- Anwar Marafi, Group Head, Business and Financial Institutions
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