Riyadh – Mubasher: Saudi Arabia-based buy now pay later (BNPL) startup Tamara has raised $340 million in a Series C funding round at a valuation of over $1 billion, according to a press release.

This round was co-led by SNB Capital and Sanabil Investments, a wholly owned company by the Public Investment Fund (PIF), with participation from Shorooq Partners, Pinnacle Capital, Impulse, and more.

Checkout.com also joined the fundraising transaction after leading Tamara's SAR 412 million funding in April 2021.

With this transaction, Tamara has secured a total of $500 million in equity funding and above $400 million in debt financing since its inception in late 2020.

Tamara is operating in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait and has more than 10 million users and over 30,000 partner merchants. The firm posted six times annual run rate revenue growth in less than two years.

Founded in 2020 by Abdulmajeed Alsukhan, Turki Bin Zarah, and Abdulmohsen Al Babtain, Tamara was one of the first companies to be granted a permit to provide BNPL services from the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA).

Alsukhan, Co-Founder and CEO of Tamara, said: “As we set our sights on becoming the next big giant in shopping, payments, and banking we remain ever grateful for the significant opportunity in this underpenetrated and underserved banking and financial services landscape.”

A spokesperson from SNB Capital commented: “Fintech is one of the core investment sectors in SNB Capital’s strategic portfolio and is aligned with the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 objective of supporting fintech entrepreneurs at every stage of their development.”

The BNPL is growing rapidly in Saudi Arabia, with the number of registered customers increasing to 10 million in 2022 from 3 million in 2021 and from 76, 000 in 2020, according to the SAMA Fintech 2022 report.