PayTabs Review

PayTabs is a Riyadh-based payments company founded in Saudi Arabia in 2014 by Abdulaziz Al Jouf. It sells a payment gateway to online merchants across the Gulf and North Africa, a payment orchestration and switching platform to banks and large enterprises, and the Paymes Super App for small Saudi businesses. We review it from the point of view of a merchant in Saudi Arabia, where PayTabs publishes the most. There, PayTabs is a technology layer rather than your acquirer: its gateway terms say you sign a separate processing and settlement agreement with a partner bank or payment service provider, which sets your card rates, handles chargebacks and pays you out. PayTabs charges on top of that. As of October 2026 its Saudi gateway agreement lists a one-time SAR 999 setup fee, SAR 199 a month and SAR 1 per transaction, before VAT. The Paymes app is priced separately at SAR 49 a month, with mada cards at 1% and credit cards at 2.25% + SAR 1, which PayTabs labels a testing-phase price. Outside Saudi Arabia the only published prices we found are per-transaction plans on its Egypt page; other markets are quoted by sales. The contract has no fixed term, and either side can end it on 60 days' notice, but fees already paid, including the setup fee, are not refunded. Trustpilot rates it 2.6 out of 5, and recent reviews describe slow payouts, frozen funds and support that is hard to reach.

Estimated annual cost at three realistic processing volumes, using PayTabs’s published online rate plus monthly fees. Real costs vary with average transaction size, chargeback rate, and any negotiated terms.

What PayTabs is

PayTabs is a payments technology company headquartered in Riyadh. Its founder and CEO, Abdulaziz Fahad Al Jouf, says he founded it in Saudi Arabia in January 2014 with $10,000 and the idea of an affordable online payment gateway for merchants in the Middle East and North Africa. The company says it is backed by private Saudi investment but publishes no shareholder list. Arab News and other coverage report a $20 million round in August 2017 from investors that were not named, and Al Jouf has said Saudi Aramco's Wa'ed entrepreneurship programme supported the company early on; those are backers, not disclosed owners. In 2017 coverage described PayTabs as incorporated in Saudi Arabia with its head operations in Bahrain, and its own 2018 announcements carried Bahrain datelines. It now gives Riyadh as its headquarters, and its announcements since at least 2022 are datelined Riyadh. Today it sells three different things: a payment gateway for small and mid-size online merchants, the Paymes Super App for very small Saudi businesses, and payment switching and orchestration software for banks, governments and large enterprises.

The group has grown by acquisition. In November 2022 it bought Digital Pay, a Saudi point-of-sale technology firm. In December 2022 it bought 100% of Paymes, a Turkish social commerce platform founded in 2017 by Hasan Jabbrov and Sabrican Zaim, for an undisclosed sum. In May 2023 it bought OGS PayLab, an Indian transaction processing and switch software company, and announced that Saudi Payments had certified it as a mada payment gateway in March that year. In March 2025 it announced it had acquired PayTabs Egypt, a local business that already carried its brand; the release says both "majority stake" and "full ownership", so the exact stake is unclear. In April 2026 it bought 100% of the TAPn'GO pay-at-table technology from the UAE. In September 2026 PayTabs agreed to buy Amazon Payment Services' Middle East and North Africa business, which serves more than 3,500 businesses in nine markets, in a deal reported at more than $100 million. Wamda and FinTech Global report that both companies approved it but give no completion date, so as of October 2026 we treat it as agreed, not completed. PayTabs's homepage claims $48 billion in processing without saying over what period, its press releases have made larger forward-looking claims, and the Amazon deal was announced with an expected combined volume of more than SAR 150 billion ($40 billion) a year. We do not treat any of these as an audited volume figure.

Why we list PayTabs as a payment gateway

We rate PayTabs from the point of view of a Saudi merchant, because Saudi Arabia is the only market where it publishes its merchant terms and a full fee schedule. There, its Payment Gateway Platform Usage Terms are explicit. The merchant signs a direct and separate processing and settlement agreement with a partner payment service provider, a bank, financial institution or PSP integrated with the platform. That partner does the know-your-customer checks, onboards the merchant, processes chargebacks and refunds, and handles merchant complaints. The terms say the merchant is the partner's customer for all purposes. PayTabs supplies the platform, which forwards transaction data to the acquirer, and charges its own platform fees. That is a gateway, not a payment facilitator or ISO.

The model is not the same everywhere. In Qatar, PayTabs's FAQ says it works with Doha Bank, which coordinates disputes, but describes payouts coming from a PayTabs settlement account. Its general FAQ, which names no market, describes sale proceeds being paid out from PayTabs's own bank account after a holding period, which is closer to an aggregator, and its Egypt page publishes all-in per-transaction plans rather than a platform fee. The pending purchase of Amazon Payment Services' regional business could change the picture again. If you sign up outside Saudi Arabia, ask in writing which company holds your merchant agreement and your funds. We found no published list of PayTabs's payment licences in any country.

What it costs in Saudi Arabia

The PayTabs gateway agreement linked from the pricing page, which was live on the site in October 2026, sets out these platform fees in its first schedule. All exclude VAT:

• One-time account setup fee: SAR 999, paid before the account is activated and not refundable.
• Platform access fee: SAR 199 a month.
• Service usage fee: SAR 1 for each transaction through the platform.
• Apple Pay through Shopify: SAR 200 a month extra.
• ZATCA Phase 2 e-invoices: available on request at SAR 10,000 a year.
• Split payouts, tokenisation and pre-authorisation, shop builder, social commerce and special customisation: available for additional, unpublished fees.

None of that is the card processing rate. The rate you pay on mada, Visa and Mastercard is set by the partner bank or PSP you contract with, and it is quoted per account. PayTabs's fees come on top, and the agreement's definition of the pricing plan also allows for fees or commissions payable to PayTabs under your partner PSP agreement, so read that document for PayTabs charges too. As an illustration of PayTabs's share alone, a shop taking 1,000 orders a month pays SAR 199 plus SAR 1,000 in usage fees, or SAR 1,199 before VAT and before processing. On an average order of SAR 100 that is about 1.2% of sales, and on an average order of SAR 30 it is about 4%. The SAR 1 fee is the one to watch if your basket is small. PayTabs can change any of these fees on 30 days' notice.

The Paymes Super App is priced separately and openly: SAR 49 a month for the app and ready-made online store, SAR 20 a month more for SoftPOS, 1% on mada cards and 2.25% + SAR 1 on credit cards, as of October 2026. PayTabs labels these testing-phase prices, subject to change. On a SAR 100 mada sale that is SAR 1, and on a SAR 100 credit card sale SAR 3.25. The main pricing page shows prices for no other country, and the country list on it belongs to the login pop-up, not the price table.

How it works and what you get

The gateway offers a hosted payment page that keeps card data off your site, your own or a managed payment form, plugins for the common e-commerce platforms, payment links and QR codes, e-invoices sent by email, SMS or WhatsApp, scheduled invoices and payments, and transaction reporting. Its FAQ lists the currencies each market can accept; in Saudi Arabia these are SAR, USD, EUR, GBP, BHD, OMR and AED, and you are settled in the local currency you pick. To go live, merchants supply owner IDs, a commercial registration that matches what the website sells, and bank documents. In the Saudi agreement PayTabs undertakes to use commercially reasonable efforts to keep the platform up 99% of the time, excluding maintenance and partner outages, and sets support targets. A complete outage gets a first response within two hours and a target fix within eight, round the clock. Routine issues get a response within 12 business hours, with business hours defined as 8am to 5pm, Sunday to Thursday. The agreement says these service levels are indicative, not a guarantee.

Contract terms

The Saudi gateway agreement has no fixed term. Either side can end it without cause on at least 60 calendar days' written notice (clause 19.3), and the merchant can leave immediately if PayTabs's arrangement with its partner PSP ends (clause 19.4). PayTabs can suspend or terminate on 30 days' notice (clause 19.1) if you miss a payment, commit an unremedied breach, run transactions it considers suspicious, or if chargebacks, credits or complaints reach a level PayTabs judges harmful to its business. You have a matching 30-day right if PayTabs breaches the agreement or becomes insolvent (clause 19.2). Invoices are issued monthly in arrears and are due within 15 days. Access can be suspended after 15 days unpaid and ended after 30. PayTabs may store your card and charge it automatically, or deduct its fees from the settlement amounts your partner PSP holds for you. Every fee paid is non-refundable, including on termination (clauses 8.4 and 19.5). PayTabs can change its fees, and the agreement, on 30 days' notice (clauses 8.6, 30.1 and 30.2). Saudi law governs, with the courts of Riyadh having exclusive jurisdiction. Remember that this is only half your paperwork. Your agreement with the partner bank or PSP sets your processing rate, payout terms, reserves and chargeback fees, and should be read just as carefully.

Payouts

PayTabs publishes no single payout timetable, because who pays you depends on the market. In Saudi Arabia settlement is the partner PSP's job. Its Kuwait FAQ says local KNET debit payments settle the next business day and Visa and Mastercard after three business days. Its Qatar FAQ says payouts follow a schedule agreed with Doha Bank, daily, weekly, monthly or on request. Its general FAQ, which names no market, describes funds wired from PayTabs's bank account weekly on Mondays, monthly, or on request after a holding period, with a minimum withdrawal of $300 and the merchant paying bank wire fees. The same FAQ says some accounts settle directly from the bank. These descriptions do not agree with each other, so ask which arrangement your account will use, and get the holding period in writing.

Reputation and complaints

As of 9 October 2026, PayTabs has a TrustScore of 2.6 out of 5 from 287 Trustpilot reviews. The star split is more polarised than the score suggests: 64% are five-star and 26% one-star. Trustpilot weights recent reviews, and only 18 were posted in the past year; eight of the ten most recent are one- or two-star. Reviews from 2026 describe payouts arriving a week or more late, funds held during compliance reviews with little communication, setup fees paid with no follow-up, and no phone line for support. A few reviewers praise individual staff for sorting problems out. The profile was claimed in February 2019 and PayTabs replies to negative reviews. Our searches found no lawsuit or regulatory enforcement action naming PayTabs.

Who PayTabs suits

PayTabs suits a Saudi online business with enough volume that SAR 199 a month and SAR 1 per transaction are a small share of sales, that wants a mada-certified local gateway with Apple Pay and invoicing, and that is comfortable arranging its processing agreement through one of PayTabs's partners. It also suits a business selling in several Gulf and North African markets that wants one gateway brand in each. Very small Saudi companies may find the Paymes app a cheaper way in, as long as they accept that its prices are still labelled a test. Before signing anywhere, get your processing rate from the partner PSP in writing, add PayTabs's fees on top, and ask who holds your funds and when they will be paid out.