Tabby Raises $230 Million to Expand BNPL Offering

The financing, announced Monday (Sept. 14), values Tabby at $6.5 billion and will be used to expand the company’s buy now, pay later (BNPL) offering in the Gulf region.

“We now have consumer and SME finance licences in Saudi Arabia and a stored value facilities licence in the UAE,” co-founder and CEO Hosam Arab said in a LinkedIn post.

“These licences allow us to build well beyond where Tabby started and this capital gives us more room to do that.”

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In an interview with Reuters, Arab said the proceeds of the funding round “are primarily about giving us the capital to go deeper in our two core markets,” which are Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Tabby now processes more than $18 billion in annualized transaction volume for 25 million registered users and works with 70,000 businesses, Amazon and Shein among them, the Reuters report added.

In other BNPL news, PYMNTS wrote Tuesday (Sept. 15) about research into the use of installment payments in funding travel.

As the title of the research report implies — “Credit Card Installments Outrun BNPL in Summer Travel Surge” — card installments covered more of the travel bill. For consumers who paid for travel or vacation expenses, 26% used credit card installments, while 8% used BNPL.

“A card installment plan can keep the purchase on an account the traveler already knows while turning a large charge into a fixed schedule,” PYMNTS wrote. “Like packing cubes, the plan divides one unwieldy item into small, more manageable parts.”

The research also found that younger and higher-income consumers displayed the strongest appetite for flexible payments. Across all purchases, 45% of Generation Z consumers and 42% of millennials turned to card installments, while consumers making more than $100,000 a year were 57% more likely to use card installments than those earning under $50,000. That indicates installment use can reflect cash flow and rewards strategy along with financial need.

“The appeal changed with the payment method,” PYMNTS added. “BNPL users placed the most value on selecting a payment frequency that fit their monthly budgets. Card installment users focused more on earning loyalty points or cash back. For a traveler booking transportation, lodging and activities at different times, that distinction may encourage the use of more than one payment tool across the same trip.”