Hosam Arab did not enter fintech as an outsider to commerce. Before Tabby, he co-founded and led Namshi, one of the Gulf's major fashion e-commerce platforms. That experience exposed him directly to merchant conversion, payment friction and the cost of acquiring online customers.

Tabby, founded with Daniil Barkalov in 2019, attacked one specific part of that funnel: giving consumers more flexible ways to pay while helping merchants increase conversion and basket size. The model spread quickly across Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

BNPL was the wedge, not the destination

Buy now, pay later can look like a narrow checkout feature. Tabby's strategy has been to use that initial relationship to move toward a broader consumer-finance platform, including cards, spending accounts and money-management products.

That expansion matters because the economics of a standalone checkout product can be exposed to merchant pricing pressure and credit cycles. A broader financial relationship creates more frequent customer interaction and a larger potential revenue pool.

Regulation became a competitive asset

By 2026 Tabby had direct regulatory authorisation in its two most important markets, including a stored-value facility licence from the Central Bank of the UAE and licensing in Saudi Arabia.

Those approvals raise the cost and complexity of growth, but they also deepen the company's strategic position. Tabby can launch more products on infrastructure it controls rather than depending entirely on third-party financial institutions.

The founder story reflects a maturing Gulf ecosystem

Arab is a repeat founder who moved from e-commerce into financial infrastructure. That career path is a sign of ecosystem compounding: founders trained by one generation of regional technology companies become the builders of the next.

Tabby's later funding rounds and expansion into Saudi Arabia also show how the region's centre of gravity has shifted. Gulf startups increasingly build for a connected Saudi-UAE market rather than treating Dubai as the only logical headquarters for regional scale.