👉 Independent reporting on the MENA tech and startup ecosystem. Stories like this exist because subscribers fund them. Subscribe now.
Tabby, the Saudi-headquartered financial services company, has received a consumer finance licence and an SME finance licence from the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA), letting it offer longer payment plans on larger purchases and provide working capital to businesses.
For consumers, the licences allow Tabby to finance purchases over SAR 2,000 with limits of up to SAR 50,000, repaid over as many as 12 monthly instalments, alongside the four interest-free payments it already offers.
The longer plans are live across retailers including Noon, Fitness Time, Almanea, IKEA, Almosafer, Almatar and flynas, rolling out to a first group of customers now and to all eligible customers over the coming weeks. The plans are structured on a Shariah-compliant Murabaha basis, with the cost agreed upfront and fixed for the life of the plan, no compounding and no late fees.
The longer terms open up higher-value categories built around bigger purchases, including education, travel, used cars and short-term rentals, where sellers can offer Tabby at checkout. The SME finance licence, separately, lets Tabby extend working capital to retailers on its platform.
The licences build on the BNPL licence Tabby received in 2025, when it graduated from SAMA's regulatory sandbox. They also arrive at a point where regulatory headroom matters to the company. Tabby's Saudi subsidiary, which posted a $55 million net profit on $378 million in revenue in its first audited annual accounts, carried net debt of $689 million as of the year ended December 2025, a figure EY's auditors noted had breached the ceiling SAMA had set by $139 million, with the company saying it was seeking approval to raise that limit.
The expansion into longer, higher-ticket financing also matches the direction Tabby's Saudi management signalled back in March 2026. The company's KSA general manager, Abdulaziz Saja, told FWDstart earlier this year that high-ticket verticals and offline retail were where Tabby had "only scratched the surface," and would be a focus for 2026.
"Tabby already gives millions of people flexibility and control over their money," said co-founder and CEO Hosam Arab. "Now we can extend that to the bigger purchases in life, paying for a course, furnishing a home, booking a holiday."
Founded in 2019 by Hosam Arab and Daniil Barkalov, Tabby serves more than 25 million registered users and over 65,000 businesses across Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait. It is the most valuable fintech in MENA, last valued at $4.5 billion in a secondary share sale in October 2025 backed by HSG and Boyu Capital, and is widely expected to pursue a Tadawul listing, though it has not confirmed timing.
The Saudi licences advance a different part of Tabby's regulatory build-out to the UAE where the Stored Value Facilities licence it secured in April now lets it hold customer funds and issue wallets, cards and money-management tools.
👉 Independent reporting on the MENA tech and startup ecosystem. Stories like this exist because subscribers fund them. Subscribe now.
