Saudi BNPL Rules Favor Tabby

The main effect of Saudi Arabia’s BNPL rules is to turn regulation from a startup hurdle into a scale advantage. Once BNPL is a licensed activity with explicit capital and operating requirements, the winners are the companies that can fund receivables, absorb compliance cost, and sign large merchants that want an approved counterparty. That shifts the market away from fast follower copycats and toward a smaller set of well funded regional platforms.

• Saudi Arabia now requires BNPL providers to be licensed by SAMA, with minimum capital of SAR 5 million. That screens out smaller entrants and makes BNPL look more like a regulated lending business than a checkout plugin, which favors players with equity, bank lines, and risk systems already in place.
  1 sama 2 sama 3 sacra
• The clearest comparable is Tamara. It received SAMA’s consumer finance and BNPL license on March 3, 2025, and Bahrain’s first BNPL license on October 1, 2024. That shows how licensing can become a regional passport for incumbents, even though each Gulf market still requires local approval.
  4 sama 5 cbb 6 cbb
• Tabby is already built for this heavier model. It charges merchants roughly 3% to 4% per transaction, underwrites shoppers in real time, raised $160 million at a $3.3 billion valuation in February 2025, and bought Saudi wallet Tweeq in September 2024 to add stored value accounts and transfers around the core BNPL flow.
  3 sacra 7 sacra 8 techcrunch

The next step is a Gulf fintech stack where BNPL leaders add wallets, cards, salary flows, and cross border payments under licensed entities in each market. If Tabby keeps compounding capital, licenses, and merchant distribution, the company moves from being a pay later button at checkout to being one of the region’s consumer finance rails.