Does Tabby Affect Your Credit Score in the UAE?

Yes, as of July 2026. Etihad Credit Bureau, the UAE’s federal credit bureau, began folding Tabby account and repayment data into UAE credit reports that month, covering both new and existing Tabby customers and pulling in relevant historical transactions, not just activity going forward. Before that, a Tabby balance could sit completely outside a bank’s view, invisible to anyone checking a credit report before approving a mortgage, car loan or credit card.

What actually shows up on your credit report

Etihad Credit Bureau’s update adds Tabby account activity and repayment history, both new and existing customer records, and historical transactions predating the July 2026 change. Every installment plan you’ve paid on time, and every one you’ve paid late, now feeds into the same file a bank checks before extending credit. Tamara, Tabby’s main BNPL competitor in the region, was added to the same update at the same time.

How it actually affects your score

Paid on time, a Tabby repayment history works in your favour, the same way responsibly used credit card debt does. It can help build a thin credit file, which matters most for younger borrowers or anyone newer to credit in the UAE. Paid late, it works against you. A missed Tabby installment is no longer a private matter between you and the app, it’s visible to any bank pulling your Etihad Credit Bureau report, and it carries the same kind of weight a missed credit card payment would.

This only applies to lenders that actually pull an Etihad Credit Bureau report, which in practice means UAE banks and other licensed financial institutions. It doesn’t mean every business you interact with sees your Tabby history, only the ones running a formal credit check.

Why this changed in 2026, not sooner

BNPL was largely unregulated in the UAE until the Central Bank of the UAE classified it as a form of Short-Term Credit under its Finance Companies Regulation, effective 27 December 2023, requiring providers like Tabby to hold a Restricted License and capping total fees at 30% of the original credit amount. That regulatory classification is what made treating BNPL as reportable consumer credit possible in the first place.

Etihad Credit Bureau had already expanded what counts toward a credit score once before, adding salary, cheque clearance and utility bill data in 2022, lifting its scoring coverage from about 70% to more than 90% of the roughly 13 million individuals and companies in its registry. The BNPL addition follows the same logic: pull in a category of financial behaviour that already exists at scale, and stop treating it as a blind spot.

What this means if you use Tabby regularly

If you consistently pay on time, this is a genuine upside, your Tabby history now works toward your credit profile instead of vanishing. If you’ve been treating a Tabby plan as credit that doesn’t really count because it never showed up anywhere, that assumption no longer holds. Missed payments are visible now, in exactly the file a bank uses to decide what you qualify for next.

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