Tamara Secures Debt Financing to Expand BNPL in GCC Region

Tamara has secured $150 million in debt financing for its shopping and payments platform.

The firm, which serves consumers in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, will use the receivables warehouse facility from Goldman Sachs to help finance its buy now, pay later (BNPL) product and expand into new verticals, Tamara said in a Thursday (March 16) press release emailed to PYMNTS.

“This deal is the first of its kind in the region and a testament to the company’s performance and the team’s ability to win the trust of top tier global financial institutions like Goldman Sachs during a difficult global macroeconomic climate,” Tamara Co-founder and CEO Abdulmajeed Alsukhan said in the release.

As PYMNTS reported in November, the GCC region has experienced a significant increase in digital payment volumes over the past two years, driven by growing smartphone penetration, the proliferation of new FinTech solutions and a growing shift from cash to digital payments.

Amazon Payment Services Head of Business Development Mohamed Imtiyaz said at the time: “Online marketplaces are increasingly looking for payment service providers which provide a seamless payment infrastructure in addition to offering added value by increasing checkout conversion with a wider choice of affordable payment options like BNPL and installments.”

BNPL has exploded in the GCC region and the wider Middle East and North Africa (MENA) market, Tabby CEO and Co-founder Hosam Arab told PYMNTS in an interview posted in October 2021.

For cash-centric regions like these, BNPL has gained wider popularity among local consumers eager to postpone payments on purchases and hold on to cash as much as possible, Arab said at the time.

Since its launch in 2020, Tamara has onboarded 6 million consumers in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and now facilitates both online and in-store commerce for 15,000 regional and global brands, according to the press release.

Tamara was launched in 2020 and said in the release that it aims to expand beyond its initial BNPL offering into other aspects of shopping, paying and banking.

“The team has shown the ability to scale a complex B2B and B2C business model, and BNPL is just an initial offering,” Alsukhan said in the release. “We see a much deeper demand that we can fulfill with the same technology and customer-first approach.”