In 2015, Saudi entrepreneur Abdulaziz Al Jouf sketched the concept of an affordable payment gateway on the back of a Starbucks napkin. He laid out his vision to deliver a secure online payments solution for merchants in the MENA region.
In the same year, a six-member team was formed to turn this concept into a reality. Offices in Riyadh and Dubai soon followed, and by 2016, PayTabs was crowned the Most Promising Saudi Startup by Forbes Middle East. Much more recognition has followed since. The company was also listed among Forbes’s Top 100 Startups in the Arab World and the Top 20 Fintech Startups in the Middle East.
Today, PayTabs provides a host of B2B ecommerce solutions, including PayTabs Touch, the first soft point-of-sale solution to launch in the MENA market. Other offerings include an invitation-only self-service payment portal called Private Label, and PayTabs Market, an express payment platform for handling multiple sellers and vendors.
In recent years, several key events have cemented PayTabs’ place as a global leader in the end-to-end payments space.
In 2021, the company partnered with financial services giants Visa and Union Pay International to provide a platform for merchants to accept contactless payments via their Android smart devices. Around the same time, the company launched SwitchOn, a market-leading, integrated and turnkey payment solution for payment processors, retailers, banks and other financial institutions.
PayTabs’ international success story shows no signs of slowing. In early 2023, the company announced the acquisition of OGS PayLab, one of the world’s leading transaction processing services and Switch solutions providers.
