Saudi-born buy-now-pay-later provider Tamara has lined up a debt facility of up to US $150 million from Goldman Sachs, giving the three-year-old fintech extra firepower to widen its product mix and reach more shoppers across the Gulf.
The agreement—described by Tamara as a first-of-its-kind deal for the region—lifts the start-up’s combined equity and debt funding to US $366 million since its September 2020 launch. Tamara says the fresh capital will meet surging demand for its flagship BNPL checkout option and bankroll expansion into “new verticals” still under wraps. Headquartered in Riyadh with offices in Dubai and Berlin, the company already serves six million customers in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain and plugs into more than 15,000 merchants, including IKEA, Jarir, SHEIN, Noon and H&M. Management argues the Gulf’s demographics play to BNPL’s strengths: roughly 70 percent of the population is millennial or Gen Z, smartphone penetration tops 100 percent, and online retail keeps rising even as global macro headwinds bite. Tamara earns a fee from merchants on each transaction while settling purchases upfront for consumers, a model that helped the firm double gross merchandise value in 2024 according to people familiar with its numbers. Goldman’s involvement signals international appetite for Gulf fintech credit; peers across emerging markets have often struggled to secure large-scale, dollar-denominated facilities amid tighter conditions.
“The company has shown the ability to scale a complex B2B and B2C business model, and BNPL is just an initial offering,” said co-founder and CEO Abdulmajeed Alsukhan.
