Tabby and Tamara: How Gulf BNPL Brands Changed Once the Rules Arrived

By Yamm Labs · Updated September 2026 · 10 min read

A product manager in Gurugram is building a pay-later flow for an Indian retailer. To study the competition she opens a Saudi fashion site on her phone and adds a jacket to the cart. At checkout, two badges sit under the price: Tabby and Tamara. Both offer to split the bill. Both say there is no interest. The offers look the same, yet the two brands behind them have taken very different routes, and the rules each one now works under were written after both badges were already on millions of screens. That gap between the promise and the rule is what anyone building a credit brand in India should study.

What did Tabby and Tamara sell when they launched?

Both companies started with one product: buy now, pay later at the online checkout. The shopper splits a purchase into a few payments, the merchant gets paid up front, and the BNPL company carries the credit. Tabby describes its early offer as a clearer, fairer way to pay, splitting purchases into flexible payments with no interest. Tamara was set up in late 2020 by three Saudi co-founders and built its early position as a Saudi-founded option in its home market.

In those first years the brand job was simple and very hard at the same time. Simple because the message fit on a button: pay in four, no interest. Hard because the button sat inside someone else’s checkout. The merchant owned the page. The BNPL brand owned a badge, a pop-up and a few seconds of attention. So the pieces that carried the brand were the ones it did control: a recognisable mark at checkout, its logo on partner merchants’ pages and an app that customers opened after the purchase.

That is a useful frame for any Indian lender or fintech that lives inside another company’s flow, whether it is a UPI credit line, an EMI offer on a marketplace or a co-branded card. When the host owns the page, your brand is the badge, the first screen after the tap and the reminder message. Everything else is borrowed space.

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When did Gulf regulators step in, and what did they require?

Regulation arrived in 2023, in both markets, within a few months. In Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Central Bank, known as SAMA, issued BNPL permits to a first group of providers during 2023. Tamara received its permit in July 2023, which Arab News reported made it the fourth authorised BNPL company in the Kingdom. Tabby’s permit followed later the same month and brought the count to five. In December 2023 SAMA published its Rules for Regulating Buy-Now-Pay-Later Companies, the rulebook every Saudi BNPL brand now designs against.

In the UAE, the Central Bank of the UAE amended its Finance Companies Regulation to bring buy now, pay later under a category it calls short-term credit. As reported when the framework was announced in December 2023, providers must either be licensed by the central bank or work as agents of a licensed bank or finance company. Restricted licence finance companies may not charge interest on short-term credit, total fees including late fees are capped at 30 percent of the original amount, and total short-term credit to one borrower is capped at AED 20,000 or three months of verified net income, whichever is lower.

Since then both companies have moved up the licence ladder. SAMA licensed Tamara Finance for consumer finance and BNPL in March 2025, and Tamara describes itself as the first fintech startup in Saudi Arabia to hold a full consumer finance licence. SAMA licensed Tabby Finance for BNPL activity in November 2025.

Read the table from left to right and a pattern shows. Each regulatory step took something away from the original pitch. No interest became a legal condition in the UAE. No consumer fees became a legal condition in Saudi Arabia. What was left to compete on was everything the rules did not touch: tone, product range, the app and the feeling of the brand.

What regulator-driven design decisions show up on a BNPL screen?

Competitor pages talk about being compliance-aware. The Gulf rules show what that means in pixels. These are the decisions a BNPL brand in Saudi Arabia or the UAE has to make, and each one has a rule behind it.

• A fixed advertising lockup. SAMA’s BNPL rules require every advertisement to carry the company’s name, logo, any distinctive slogan and contact information. That is a lockup decision, not a legal footnote. It has to survive a six-second story, a checkout badge and a billboard, so the mark, slogan and contact line need a compact version designed from day one.
• A pop-up before the first transaction. The same rules say approvals and acknowledgements must be shown to the consumer as a pop-up window to read and agree to before dealing. That fixes a screen in the sequence. The design question is how to make a legal acknowledgement readable in Arabic and English on a small phone without losing the shopper at checkout.
• A limit on persuasion. SAMA tells BNPL companies to avoid advertising that is excessively persuasive and encourages credit for unnecessary consumption, and to avoid any false offer, statement or claim. That is a tone rule. It rules out a whole family of treat-yourself creative and pushes brands toward control, planning and confidence.
• Caps you can see in the flow. The Saudi rules cap BNPL plans at 12 instalments and total outstanding financing at SAR 10,000 per consumer. In the UAE the cap for restricted licence providers is AED 20,000 or three months of income, whichever is lower. Caps shape the plan picker, the limit screen and the message a customer sees when a purchase is declined.
• Naming the legal entity. A Tabby web page we checked in September 2026 states in its footer which Tabby company provides pay later and card credit, and that its payments company is licensed by the Central Bank of the UAE. Tamara publishes its SAMA licence number on its own announcements. The footer is part of the brand system, and it grows every time the licence structure changes.

None of these decisions is visible in a brand guidelines PDF full of mood boards. All of them are visible to a customer in the first session.

When the rule makes your promise compulsory, the brand has to be about something the rule cannot copy.

How did Tamara reposition once it held a finance licence?

Tamara’s licence in March 2025 changed what it could sell. Its own announcement lists pay-later plans of up to 24 months, financing products and cashback programmes called Tamara Smart and Tamara Smart+. A brand that could once be summed up as pay in four now had to carry longer credit, a membership product and a finance offer that shows an APR calculator.

In September 2025 Tamara published its brand evolution under the line “Own Your Dream”. The company kept lavender and purple at the centre, describing the colours as standing for ambition, transformation and momentum, and redrew its icons, illustrations and creative assets. It framed the change as the same promise with a new look. The agency, if any, is not named in the post.

The strategic move is clear. Ambition and dreams give a lender room to talk about bigger purchases and longer plans without leaning on the no-interest headline that every licensed provider now shares. The risk is also clear. A dream-led brand in a market where the regulator warns against persuasion toward unnecessary consumption has to keep its creative on the side of planning, not impulse. That tension is where the design and copy work sits.

Why did Tabby rebrand as a money app in 2026?

In September 2026 Tabby unveiled a new identity built with the London agency Ragged Edge. The idea is “Show Money Who’s Boss”, and the stated shift is from a way to pay to a complete money app, with a new spending account called Tabby Cash. Tabby says it has more than 25 million customers across Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The design choices are specific. Tabby commissioned a custom typeface drawn for Arabic and Latin scripts together, which matters for a brand whose disclosures and acknowledgements must read cleanly in both. It introduced hand-drawn characters called Monions that personify money tasks. It moved photography to real customers and merchants in natural settings, and dropped the glossy gradients and 3D renders common across fintech. Its chief marketing officer said the brand did not want to look expensive; it wanted to be on the customer’s side.

Read against the rules, the rebrand makes sense. “Show money who’s boss” is a control message. It speaks to planning and command rather than spending more, which sits comfortably with a regulator that warns against excessively persuasive credit advertising. It also moves the brand onto ground the rules do not level: spending, sending and saving in one app.

Where did the no-interest story stop working?

It stopped working as a differentiator the moment it became the floor. In the UAE, restricted licence providers may not charge interest on short-term credit. In Saudi Arabia, BNPL companies may not charge consumer fees beyond delay penalties and collection costs. Once every licensed competitor had to say the same thing, the headline that built both brands described the category, not the company.

It also stopped fitting the product. Plans of up to 24 months, financing with an APR, cards and a spending account do not fit inside a pay-in-four badge. Both brands had to grow a system that could carry several products with different disclosures without breaking into a dozen sub-brands.

What neither company has published is a before-and-after result tying a rebrand to growth. We found no public data on that, and any page that claims to know the uplift is guessing. The useful lesson is the sequence, not a number.

What should a regulated lender in India take from Tabby and Tamara?

India’s pay-later and digital lending market has its own rules, and they already shape the screen. The Reserve Bank of India requires lenders to give a Key Facts Statement to every prospective borrower before the loan contract is executed, for retail and MSME term loans sanctioned from 1 October 2024, and the statement includes the annual percentage rate. The RBI’s Key Facts Statement notification sets out the format. Like SAMA’s pop-up rule, that is a fixed screen in the sequence, and it arrives at exactly the moment a brand most wants the customer to keep going.

• Design the disclosure screen before the hero screen. Decide where the Key Facts Statement sits, how the APR is shown and how the customer acknowledges it, then build the rest of the flow around it. The Gulf brands had to retrofit pop-ups into flows built for speed.
• Do not build on a claim the regulator can make universal. Zero cost, no hidden charges, instant approval: if a rule can make it a requirement, it is a category line, not a brand line.
• Build a lockup that carries the legal name. The more your licence structure changes, the more your footer and ad lockups have to carry. A compact lockup with the lending entity’s name is far cheaper to design in at the start than to retrofit across every live asset.
• Keep the tone on control, not impulse. Tabby’s control message and Tamara’s planning-led products both stay clear of the persuasion line the Saudi rules draw.
• Plan for the product you will sell in three years. Both Gulf brands outgrew pay in four. A brand system that can carry a card, a longer loan and a savings product without a rebrand is cheaper than two rebrands.

If you are weighing who should build that system, our guide to choosing a fintech branding agency in India lists the questions to ask, and our breakdown of fintech branding cost in India shows what each stage of the work costs in rupees. For the wider regulatory picture across banks, insurers and funds, start with the BFSI branding guide for India.

People also ask

Who made Tabby’s 2026 rebrand?

Campaign Middle East reported in September 2026 that Tabby’s new identity was created with Ragged Edge, a London-based agency. The work includes a custom Arabic and Latin typeface, illustrated characters called Monions and photography of real customers.

Are Tabby and Tamara regulated in Saudi Arabia?

Yes. The Saudi Central Bank granted both BNPL permits in July 2023. It licensed Tamara Finance for consumer finance and BNPL in March 2025 and Tabby Finance for BNPL in November 2025.

What must a BNPL advertisement in Saudi Arabia include?

Under SAMA’s BNPL rules, an advertisement must include the company’s name, logo, any distinctive slogan and contact information. The rules also warn against false claims and against excessively persuasive advertising that encourages credit for unnecessary consumption.

Does India have a similar disclosure rule for pay-later products?

For retail and MSME term loans sanctioned from 1 October 2024, the RBI requires a Key Facts Statement, including the APR, before the loan contract is executed. That makes the disclosure screen a fixed step that the brand and product teams should design first.