Tabby, the Saudi Arabia-based buy-now-pay-later platform, has entered early-stage discussions with financial advisers regarding a potential initial public offering on the Tadawul, Saudi Arabia's main stock exchange, according to information available by March 2026. The discussions are at a preliminary stage and no formal mandate has been confirmed publicly, though the conversations reflect growing confidence in the company's scale, commercial momentum, and positioning within the Gulf's rapidly evolving payments landscape.
Tabby operates across Saudi Arabia and the UAE, embedding its instalment payment product directly into the checkout flows of e-commerce retailers and, increasingly, physical point-of-sale systems. The company's model positions it as a payments infrastructure layer for GCC merchants rather than a standalone consumer credit product, a framing that has resonated with both merchant partners seeking higher conversion rates and investors evaluating the company's long-term market position.
BNPL EMBEDDED INTO GCC E-COMMERCE INFRASTRUCTURE
Transaction volumes have been scaling across Tabby's two primary markets as e-commerce penetration in Saudi Arabia and the UAE continues to grow year-on-year. The platform's deep integration into merchant checkout systems means that Tabby's volume expands partially as a function of overall e-commerce growth in the region, giving it a structural tailwind that operates independently of any specific merchant acquisition campaign the company runs.
The company has extended its presence beyond the consumer-facing instalment product to become a component of the payments stack that merchants rely upon day-to-day. Integration at the merchant system level — rather than simply at the front-end checkout interface — creates meaningful switching costs that reinforce Tabby's incumbency once a merchant has adopted the platform. This architecture has allowed the company to embed itself across categories spanning fashion, electronics, travel, and lifestyle goods throughout the GCC.
The GCC's BNPL market has attracted multiple operators in recent years, but Tabby has established itself as one of the segment's leading platforms by transaction volume and merchant coverage. The competitive dynamics in Saudi Arabia are shaped partly by relatively low credit card penetration among younger demographic cohorts, creating a structural opening for instalment-based payment products that do not require consumers to hold a conventional revolving credit facility with a bank.
TADAWUL LISTING WOULD MARK MILESTONE FOR GCC FINTECH
A Tadawul listing for Tabby would represent a notable milestone for the Gulf fintech ecosystem, which has produced a small number of high-profile, high-growth companies but relatively few public market exits to date. Saudi Arabia's Capital Market Authority has been working to attract technology and fintech listings to the exchange as part of the Kingdom's broader capital market development agenda under Vision 2030, and a Tabby listing would represent precisely the kind of home-grown technology company the programme is designed to showcase.
Early-stage IPO discussions of the nature Tabby is understood to have commenced can evolve over a period of months or considerably longer before a formal decision to proceed is taken and a prospectus is registered with the Capital Market Authority. The outcome will depend on factors including the state of regional equity markets at the time of a potential launch, investor appetite for high-growth fintech listings, and the company's own revenue and profitability metrics at the moment it formally approaches the public market.
Tabby has not made any public statement confirming the IPO discussions or providing detail on prospective timing, valuation expectations, free float size, or the identity of the financial advisers involved in the preliminary conversations.