Al Etihad Credit Bureau Puts Tabby and Tamara BNPL Data in UAE Credit Reports

Al Etihad Credit Bureau (AECB) will start folding BNPL data in UAE credit reports from July 2026, adding account and repayment information from Tabby and Tamara, the federal credit bureau announced. The change covers both new and existing customers of the two providers and pulls in relevant historical transactions, not just activity going forward.

Until now, a UAE resident could carry an active BNPL balance with Tabby or Tamara and have it stay invisible to any bank pulling their AECB credit report. That gap closes with this update. Every on-time instalment, and every missed one, now feeds into the same file a bank checks before approving a mortgage, a car loan, or a credit card.

“As financial services evolve and new forms of consumer financing gain wider adoption, it is important that credit reports provide a comprehensive view of an individual’s financial commitments,” said Marwan Ahmad Lutfi, Director General of Al Etihad Credit Bureau, in comments reported by the Khaleej Times.

Hosam Arab, CEO and co-founder of Tabby, framed the change as a payoff for customers who pay on time: “Responsible lending starts with a clear view of a person’s finances, and we have always underwritten in real time to make credit more accessible.”

Sagar Shah, General Manager UAE at Tamara, called it a step toward “supporting greater transparency and creating more opportunities for people to participate in the financial system.”

Also, read Tabby Evolves Beyond BNPL – Secures Landmark UAE Digital Wallet License from CBUAE

What’s actually changing

The practical effect is that a BNPL track record now counts twice. Paid on time, it can support a thin credit file. Paid late, it can weigh one down the same way a missed credit card payment would.

Why BNPL data in UAE credit reports needed a regulator’s blessing first

BNPL was largely unregulated in the UAE until the Central Bank of the UAE folded it into its Finance Companies Regulation through Circular No. 3/2023, effective 27 December 2023. That circular formally classified BNPL as a form of consumer Short-Term Credit and required any provider offering it to hold a Restricted License, according to legal summaries from White & Case and Hadef & Partners.

The rule caps total fees, including any late charges, at 30% of the original credit amount, and limits short-term credit extended to a single borrower to whichever is lower: AED 20,000 (about $5,446) or three months of that borrower’s verified net income. Restricted License Finance Companies must also carry out due diligence on a borrower’s creditworthiness before extending credit, though the regulation itself does not spell out a specific credit-report-pull threshold.

That 2023 framework is what made a move like AECB’s possible. Before BNPL had a defined regulatory category, there was no clean mechanism for treating it as reportable consumer credit in the first place.

AECB has done this before, just with different data

This is not AECB’s first expansion of what counts toward a credit score. In May 2022, the bureau said it had lifted its Credit Score’s scoring coverage to more than 90% of the roughly 13 million individuals and companies in its registry, up from about 70%, according to a Zawya-hosted release at the time. It got there by pulling in monthly salary history, cheque clearance history, and telecom and utility bill payment records, alternative data that let the bureau score roughly 3 million previously unscoreable people and companies.

The BNPL addition follows the same playbook: take a category of financial behaviour that already exists at scale, and fold it into the official credit picture instead of leaving it as a blind spot. AECB is also preparing a broader overhaul called Credit Score 3.0, expected in the first half of 2026, which is meant to let scores update quarterly and shorten how long a delinquency stays in the red zone, from 24 months down to under a year, according to reporting on the announcement. The BNPL data addition and Credit Score 3.0 are separate initiatives, but they land in the same window and point the same direction: a faster-moving, more inclusive credit file.

The market this plugs into

BNPL is not a niche product in the UAE. The market was worth an estimated $4.25 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $5.02 billion in 2026, growing to $11.49 billion by 2031 at a compound annual growth rate of 18.03%, according to Mordor Intelligence.

Tabby and Tamara are the two names most associated with that growth. Tabby, founded in Dubai in 2019, raised a $160 million Series E in February 2025 led by Blue Pool Capital and Hassana Investment Company at a $3.3 billion valuation, then saw early investors sell shares in a secondary transaction that valued the company at $4.5 billion by October 2025, according to TechCrunch and Bloomberg. Tamara, founded in Saudi Arabia, became the kingdom’s first fintech unicorn after a $340 million Series C in December 2023 valued it at $1 billion, Forbes reported at the time. Tamara now counts more than 10 million users and over 30,000 partner merchants across its markets (Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait combined).

This is also happening against a backdrop of rising consumer borrowing generally. UAE consumer credit reached AED 598,521 million in the first quarter of 2026, up from AED 583,927 million in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to Central Bank of the UAE data compiled by Trading Economics. BNPL sits alongside that broader credit expansion rather than apart from it.

Why it matters

For the credit system

A credit bureau is only as useful as what it captures. Every BNPL instalment that stayed off a credit report was a data point a bank couldn’t see when deciding whether to approve someone for a mortgage or a personal loan, even though that instalment plan was a real financial obligation competing for the same monthly income. Folding Tabby and Tamara data in closes a gap that has been growing in step with the BNPL market itself, from a $4.25 billion category in 2025 toward an $11.49 billion one by 2031. The longer that gap stayed open, the more consumer debt was accumulating outside the system meant to track it.

For consumers and lenders

For a customer who pays on time, this is a genuine upside: BNPL repayment history that previously vanished into a private ledger can now support a thin credit file, which matters most for younger, newer-to-credit borrowers, the same Gen Z segment Mordor Intelligence flags as the market’s fastest-growing user base. For a customer who has been treating BNPL as credit that does not count, the incentive changes overnight.

A missed Tabby or Tamara instalment is no longer a private matter between customer and provider; it is now visible to any bank that pulls a credit report. Lenders, meanwhile, get a more complete risk picture, but only for Tabby and Tamara. Any UAE BNPL activity outside those two platforms remains off the file until AECB strikes similar arrangements elsewhere.

The bottom line

AECB has now folded two rounds of alternative data into its credit scoring within four years: salary, cheque, and utility data in 2022, and BNPL activity in 2026. Both moves follow the same logic of making the credit file match real financial behaviour more closely rather than lagging behind it. What is worth watching next is whether AECB extends the same treatment to other BNPL providers operating in the UAE beyond Tabby and Tamara, and how Credit Score 3.0’s faster scoring cycle interacts with this new BNPL data once both are live later in 2026.

FAQs

Editor’s Take: BNPL has been a defined, regulated credit category in the UAE since December 2023, and Tabby and Tamara have spent the years since building real scale on top of that framework. AECB’s own 2022 alternative-data expansion shows the bureau already had the appetite and the technical playbook to pull in non-bank payment data before BNPL was even part of the conversation.