Tabby & Tamara (BNPL)

At checkout the customer picks Tabby or Tamara instead of a card, passes a quick eligibility check, and pays the first instalment; the provider settles the full amount (minus its merchant fee) to the store and collects the remaining instalments from the customer. The typical product is a split into four payments, alongside longer plans for larger baskets. Both companies are regulated fintechs in their home markets and integrate as a payment method in Salla, Zid, Shopify and custom checkouts through their merchant APIs, and both provide payment links for sales that happen outside a website.

BNPL matters in the Gulf because a large share of retail, beauty, electronics and even clinic and dental payments are made in instalments, and offering it visibly raises conversion for mid-priced items. For a business selling on WhatsApp the relevant feature is the payment link: a customer asks about a 1,200-riyal product, the agent replies with the price and a Tabby or Tamara link, and the customer completes the purchase on the phone. The merchant still needs its own store or gateway account; BNPL adds a method, it does not replace the checkout.

Nano AI's WhatsApp agents treat BNPL as one of the payment options the agent can offer when a store already has Tabby or Tamara enabled, and they confirm a sale only after the provider or the store reports the payment, never on the customer's say-so. When talking to a vendor, ask whether the agent can generate a provider-specific link or only mention the option, how it handles a declined eligibility check politely in Arabic, and how refunds through BNPL are routed to a person.