Tabby vs Tamara: The Competition Is Moving Beyond Buy Now, Pay Later

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Tabby vs Tamara: The Competition Is Moving Beyond Buy Now, Pay Later

FM desk · 31 Oct 2026 · 3 min read

✦ Key takeaways

01BNPL is becoming bigger than instalments. Tabby and Tamara are expanding into longer financing plans and additional financial services.
02Both companies want stronger customer relationships. Digital wallets, money transfers, rewards and merchant financing help them serve customers beyond shopping transactions.
03Growth comes with greater financial risk. Longer financing plans create more revenue opportunities but also increase exposure to credit losses, funding costs and operating expenses.

Tabby and Tamara became familiar to Gulf shoppers through a simple offer: buy something now and spread the payment across instalments.

That checkout option helped both companies build large consumer-finance businesses. Now their products are expanding into larger purchases, longer financing plans and other financial services.

The next stage of their competition reaches well beyond the payment button that introduced them.

The checkout gave them access to both sides of a purchase

Buy now, pay later connects two customers with different needs.

A shopper wants flexibility over when to pay. A merchant wants the purchase to go through.
That puts the provider in a useful position. It builds relationships with retailers while learning how customers use and repay credit.

By September 2026, Tabby reported 25 million registered users and 70,000 business partners. Those are company-reported measures of reach, rather than a count of people actively borrowing each month. Tabby’s September announcement

The strategic opportunity is to offer more services to a customer base the company has already spent years acquiring.

Tabby is expanding across spending, transfers and business finance

Tabby’s recent moves show how broad that ambition has become.

In June 2026, it announced Saudi consumer-finance and SME-finance licences. Eligible customers could finance larger purchases over as many as 12 monthly payments, while merchants could access working capital.

That creates opportunities in categories where four short instalments may not be enough, including education, travel and furnishing a home. Tabby’s finance-licence announcement

Its expansion also reaches beyond borrowing.

Tabby acquired Saudi digital-wallet business Tweeq, while its UAE wallet licence supports Tabby Cash, with card spending and local and international transfers.

The direction is toward a more frequent relationship with customers: helping them manage money between shopping trips as well as when they make a purchase. Tabby’s product and funding update

Tamara’s financing expansion is already visible in its accounts

Tamara received a Saudi licence covering consumer finance and buy now, pay later in March 2025.

Its Saudi website now promotes payment plans extending up to 24 months, alongside its Smart membership offering cashback and rewards. Availability and terms depend on the product and customer. Saudi Central Bank announcement, Tamara’s Saudi offering

The financial effect of moving into broader financing is becoming clearer.
Tamara Finance Company’s interim statements recorded SAR 410.2 million in income from Islamic financing in the first half of 2026, compared with SAR 2.3 million a year earlier.

Its total revenue reached SAR 1.38 billion, while net profit rose to SAR 207.4 million. These figures cover the reporting entity and its consolidated subsidiaries, rather than establishing the performance of every business across Tamara’s wider international group. Tamara’s H1 2026 statements

Profitability makes the comparison more interesting than valuation alone

For the same six-month period, Tabby’s Saudi financing company reported net profit of SAR 79.7 million, down from SAR 90.4 million a year earlier.

Argaam’s reporting attributed the decline partly to higher credit-loss provisions and operating expenses. The comparison concerns the Saudi finance entities, rather than the entire Tabby and Tamara groups. Tabby’s H1 results

The valuation headlines tell a different story.

Tabby announced a September 2026 equity round at a $6.5 billion valuation, subject to regulatory approvals. Tamara’s disclosed December 2023 round valued it at $1 billion.

Those prices were established almost three years apart. They cannot settle which business is performing better today. Tabby’s announcement, Tamara’s Series C announcement

Larger financing products bring larger responsibilities

Longer payment plans can generate additional income, but they also expose providers to more risk.

Tamara’s H1 statements show that trade-off: its net expected-credit-loss charge increased to SAR 357.5 million as the business expanded. That accounting charge estimates losses; it is not the same as cash already lost. Tamara’s interim statements

The next phase will depend on how well both companies balance growth with repayment, funding costs and operating expenses.

The checkout helped them reach customers. Their ability to serve those customers profitably across a much wider range of financial needs will determine what comes next.