Dubai-based BNPL Tabby raises $200m at $1.5bn valuation

Middle Eastern ‘buy now, pay later’ Tabby has secured $200m in Series D funding ahead of a potential initial public offering.

The funding round comes less than a year after it raised $58m Series C led by Sequoia Capital India and STV.

Both firms took part in this round, which sees the fintech valued at $1.bn and pushes it into unicorn status, as first reported by TechCrunch.

“We’ve seen pretty incredible growth over the last year. And with that, we saw a lot of inbound interest from investors that I think always saw value in the BNPL model,” Tabby founder and CEO Hosam Arab told TechCrunch.

“Despite seeing the challenges with the model in other markets, there was that interest in understanding why this market is different and why we’ve grown profitably.”

Existing investors PayPal Ventures, Arbor Ventures and Mubadala Investment Capital also took part in the round.

Arab told TechCrunch that Tabby sees this as “potentially the last round of capital that we would raise before an IPO” and that the company specifically brought in investors with public market expertise.

He also said the company has achieved profitability, which has proved challenging for BNPLs in other regions, and attributed this to being in a market where the structure aligns with the economics of a BNPL model, according to the report.

Working with more than 30,000 brands ranging from luxury, fashion and beauty to children’s toys and electronics, Tabby has grown to more than 10 million users across Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE since it was founded in 2019. 

In the UK, Zilch secured a deal with eBay this week that saw it retain its $2bn valuation.

It is another BNPL (slash ad-subsidised payment network) that has managed to reach profitability, but operating in a very different market.