Tabby secures consumer and SME finance licences in Saudi Arabia

Published: 2026-06-30T14:11:09.000Z

The buy now, pay later label that built Tabby into the Gulf's most recognizable fintech is starting to look too small for what the company is becoming. Tabby has secured consumer finance and SME finance licenses from the Saudi Central Bank, marking its clearest step yet from instalment app into regulated lender.

The buy now, pay later label that built Tabby into the Gulf's most recognizable fintech is starting to look too small for what the company is becoming. Tabby has secured two finance licenses from the Saudi Central Bank, known as SAMA, a consumer finance license and an SME finance license, marking its clearest step yet from a short term instalment app into a fully regulated lender. The consumer license lets it offer Shariah compliant payment plans on purchases above 2,000 riyals, up to a ceiling of 50,000 riyals, spread across as many as 12 monthly payments, while the SME license allows it to extend working capital to the businesses selling on its platform. Announced on 29 June, the move reshapes what Tabby is allowed to do in its largest market. The logic behind the expansion is essentially about growing with the customer rather than chasing a new one. Tabby's existing service was capped at 5,000 riyals and largely covered everyday purchases such as clothing, footwear and cheaper flights, but customers have increasingly asked for higher limits and longer repayment periods. Abdulaziz Saja, the general manager of Tabby Saudi Arabia, framed it plainly, noting that someone who first used Tabby four years ago is at a different stage of life now, with different needs the company has to keep up with. The longer plans are aimed squarely at bigger ticket moments, such as furnishing a home, funding a course or booking a holiday, and they are already live across retailers including Noon, Fitness Time, IKEA, Almanea, Almosafer, Almatar and the airline flynas. The structure of the financing matters as much as the headline. The longer plans use a Murabaha arrangement, a Shariah compliant model under which the financing cost is disclosed and fixed at the outset, with no compounding and no late fees. That keeps the product within Islamic finance principles while still allowing Tabby to build a meaningful lending book, since a single larger loan can be worth as much as several short BNPL transactions. The merchant mix is telling, since furniture retailers, fitness chains, travel agencies and an airline are precisely the large basket sellers where a 12 month plan can change a purchase decision, feeding a flywheel in which more merchants attract more customers and vice versa. Stepping into longer term lending does, however, change Tabby's risk profile. Extending a relationship from a couple of months to as long as a year and a half demands far stronger underwriting, better data and closer monitoring, since a great deal can go wrong in a borrower's life over that period. Saja said the company would manage this by initially focusing on customers with a proven repayment history and gradually raising their limits, drawing on data from merchant funded 12 month pilots in Saudi Arabia and its existing longer term financing in the UAE. The licenses build on the regulatory foundation Tabby laid in 2025, when it graduated from SAMA's sandbox and won its BNPL license, and chief executive Hosam Arab cast the move as extending the same control customers already have to the bigger purchases in life. The regional thread runs straight through Saudi Arabia's fintech ambitions. The kingdom is targeting 525 fintech companies by 2030, up from fewer than 20 in 2018, and Tabby's progression from a narrow, low risk product into a regulated consumer and SME lender captures the next stage of that journey, where leading platforms evolve into institutions that compete with traditional banks. With Tabby also integrating digital wallet capabilities after its acquisition of Tweeq, the company is steadily pulling more of the financial value chain inside its own walls, in a market that increasingly wants its fintechs to grow up.