Saudi fintech Tamara raises $6 million in country's largest seed round for its buy now pay later platform
Summary
Riyadh-based buy now pay later platform Tamara has raised $6 million in a seed round led by Saudis Impact46, it announced in a statement to MENAbytes today. Some family offices also participated in the round.Founded last year by Abdulmajeed Alsukhan, Turki Bin Zarah, and Abdulmohsen Albabtain, Tamara enables merchants to offer buy now pay later services to their customers on their online purchases. The fintech makes money by charging its merchants.Launched less than six months ago, Tamara already has some of the leading regional and local brands like Namshi, Whites Pharmacy, Toys R Us using its services. Explaining why he left one of the leading Saudi startups to build something new from scratch, Abdulmajeed told MENAbytes that buy now pay later offers a massive untapped opportunity and can impact the lives of millions of people and tens of thousands of merchants across the region, I have always been driven by impact and that has been my only motivation to build Tamara.He co-founded Tamara with Turki Bin Zarah and Abdulmohsen Albabtain. It plans to use the latest funds to fuel its growth in the two markets.In addition to Saudi and UAE, Tamara also has offices in Germany and Vietnam that host some of its engineering team members.Buy now pay later did not exists as a category in the region until a few years ago but weve seen multiple buy now pay later players launch and (/or) raise VC money within the last eighteen months including Tabby thats present in UAE & Saudi, Dubai-based Spotii and Postpay, and Cairo-based Shahry.Similar platforms in the United States, Europe, Australia, and Southeast Asia have become very popular among both merchants and customers within the last few years, pushing their valuations in private and public markets to tens of billions of dollars.