Saudi buy-now-pay-later firm Tabby completed a secondary share sale in October 2025 that established a new valuation of $4.5 billion for the company, up from $3.3 billion at its previous funding round in February 2025. The transaction involved existing investors selling shares to new institutional buyers rather than the issuance of new shares, meaning the proceeds flowed to selling shareholders rather than to Tabby's balance sheet directly.
The uplift in valuation — a rise of more than 36 per cent in under a year — reflects continued investor appetite for growth-stage fintech businesses in the Gulf region, where a combination of high smartphone penetration, a young consumer demographic, and expanding e-commerce activity has created favourable conditions for instalment-based payment products.
SECONDARY TRANSACTION STRUCTURE AND TIMING
Secondary share sales of this kind are commonly used by early investors and employees to achieve liquidity without requiring the company to launch a formal initial public offering. The involvement of new institutional buyers willing to acquire shares at a $4.5 billion valuation signals a degree of confidence in Tabby's near-term trajectory and in the broader BNPL market across the Gulf Cooperation Council, where consumer spending patterns and regulatory frameworks continue to evolve in ways generally favourable to instalment-based payment models.
Tabby serves more than 10 million shoppers across Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait, giving it a significant presence across three of the Gulf's principal consumer markets. The scale of its user base provides a foundation of transaction volume that underpins the company's revenue generation and the data advantages that accrue to a leading instalment payments provider in terms of credit assessment, risk modelling, and merchant relationship development.
The timing of the secondary transaction, coming ahead of a planned IPO, suggests that Tabby's existing investors are managing their exposure thoughtfully, allowing new institutional shareholders to establish positions before a public listing while providing the company with a fresh reference valuation that a prospective IPO process could build upon.
IPO AMBITIONS AND REGIONAL CONTEXT
Reports of a planned IPO position Tabby within a broader pattern of Gulf-based technology and fintech companies exploring public market listings as regional equity markets have matured and deepened. Saudi Arabia's Tadawul exchange has seen a series of technology-adjacent listings in recent years, and a Tabby IPO would represent one of the more significant consumer fintech offers in the region's recent capital markets history, likely drawing interest from both regional and international institutional investors.
The BNPL model has faced scrutiny in some markets regarding consumer credit risk and the potential for users to accumulate unsustainable payment obligations across multiple providers. Gulf regulators have been developing frameworks to govern the sector, and Tabby's positioning ahead of an IPO will involve demonstrating compliance with emerging regulatory standards alongside the robust growth metrics and strong unit economics that public market investors typically demand from high-valuation consumer fintech companies.
With a valuation of $4.5 billion and a customer base spanning three GCC countries, Tabby enters any IPO process as the dominant regional player in its category. How the company performs in a public market context will be an important data point for other Gulf fintech businesses evaluating their own timing and appetite for a listing.