Tabby is the largest buy now pay later provider in the Gulf, with around 15 million users, and it is the instalment option most Kuwaiti shoppers already recognise. Adding it to your checkout lets a customer pay over time while Tabby pays you and carries the collection. The work takes 5 to 13 hours at 10 KWD per hour.
Why stores add an instalment option
Most abandoned carts in Kuwait are not a technical failure. The customer wanted the item, saw the total, and decided this was not the month. An instalment option answers that specific objection while the customer is still on the page.
The commercial logic is simple. The shopper pays in instalments, you receive the order value from Tabby, and Tabby charges you a merchant fee for taking on the risk and the collection. Tabby’s own marketing says merchants see average order values rise by 20 to 40 percent after switching it on. Treat that as a vendor figure rather than a promise, but the direction is real and the reason is obvious: a shopper who is no longer looking at the full amount buys the larger size, the second item, or the better model.
This also means instalments are not for every shop. On low value baskets the fee is a cost with nothing to show for it. On furniture, electronics, gold, fashion, cosmetics, travel and packages, it changes decisions.
What we build
- Tabby added at checkout beside KNET and cards, where it gets noticed rather than buried.
- Instalment messaging on product, cart and category pages in Arabic and English, matching how your brand talks.
- Order status updated when Tabby confirms or rejects, so no paid order sits marked unpaid.
- Display rules by basket value, category or product, so cheap items stay clean.
- Refunds, cancellations and partial refunds from your own dashboard, passed back to Tabby.
- A report matching Tabby payouts, which arrive grouped and net of fees, to individual orders.
- Testing that covers approved, declined, abandoned and refunded purchases.
How we work
- Free first hour with an engineer. We look at your basket sizes and product mix and say whether instalments will pay for themselves. If your average order is small, we will say so.
- Route decision. Direct Tabby integration, or Tabby as a method inside a gateway you already run such as MyFatoorah or Tap Payments. This choice changes the hours, so we make it before we start.
- Merchant approval. Tabby onboards and approves merchants itself, on its own terms. We prepare the document list with you and build in parallel.
- Test mode. Every scenario is run against the test environment: approved, declined, customer drops out halfway, full refund, partial refund.
- Checkout, product pages and wording. Placement, display rules, Arabic and English copy, and a mobile layout that does not push your pay button below the screen.
- Launch and first week. Live switch, a real purchase, then monitoring while genuine traffic finds the edge cases.
Cost and timeline
| Part of the work | Hours | Cost at 10 KWD/hour |
|---|---|---|
| Setup support and test access | 1 | 10 KWD |
| Checkout placement and payment flow | 3 | 30 KWD |
| Order status handling and failure cases | 2 | 20 KWD |
| Product and cart page instalment messaging | 2 | 20 KWD |
| Refunds and reconciliation report | 2 | 20 KWD |
| Live testing and launch | 1 | 10 KWD |
| Typical total | 5 to 13 | 50 to 130 KWD |
Calendar time is three to five working days of build once your merchant account is approved. Approval time is Tabby’s, not ours. For a project that includes the store itself, use the cost calculator.
How it sits next to KNET and cards
Your checkout should read, top to bottom, the way Kuwait actually pays. KNET first, because it is the national debit network and the method most Kuwaiti shoppers reach for. Cards next, through a gateway such as MyFatoorah or Tap. Instalments after that, shown only where they make sense. The payment gateway integration practice covers the full checkout, and the comparison of MyFatoorah, KNET and Tap sets out the per transaction fees of each route.
If you want a locally licensed alternative alongside Tabby, see Deema and Taly, both Kuwaiti and Sharia compliant. Merchants often run two providers so that a shopper declined by one still has a second option.
Pitfalls to avoid
- Showing instalments on everything. It cheapens the store and trains customers to ignore the message.
- Only mentioning it at the last step. The objection forms on the product page. Say it there.
- Breaking the declined path. A refused application must return the shopper to a working cart with KNET intact.
- Skipping the returns test. If the refund does not reach Tabby, your customer keeps paying instalments on an item they sent back, and you get the complaint.
- Translating the message with an automatic tool. Instalment wording in Arabic has to be precise about what the customer owes and to whom.
- No reconciliation report. Grouped, net of fee payouts are painful to match by hand three months after launch.
Book a free first consultation and we will review your checkout and tell you whether Tabby, Deema, Taly or none of them fits your basket size.