Local Always Wins: Tap Payments Co-Founder And CEO Ali Abulhasan’s Fintech Playbook

For Ali Abulhasan, co-founder and CEO of KSA-headquartered Tap Payments, building and scaling a fintech startup—which, today, eases payments and operation management for more than 100,000 businesses across the MENA region—has largely been enabled by the fact that he and his team have built the right product in the right place at the right time. As Abulhasan puts it, Saudi Arabia is in the middle of its fintech moment, and that, by itself, has given Tap Payments a distinct advantage as an enterprise that simplifies billing and payments for its clients.

“Saudi Arabia has moved from targets to outcomes,” Abulhasan tells Inc. Arabia. “In 2025, digital payments reached 79 percent of all retail transactions. Digital is no longer the experiment; it is the default. That shift is pulling everything forward, from acceptance and payouts, to fraud and compliance. The rails are also evolving fast. Contactless and cardless tokenized payments now dominate. Customers expect speed and secure authentication, which means every checkout must be faster, safer, and more locally aware.”

This shift in consumer behavior has also coincided with sweeping regulatory changes across the Kingdom’s fintech landscape, Abulhasan notes. “Policy momentum is another signal,” he explains. “Buy-now-pay-later later (BNPL) offerings now have a clear Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) rulebook and licensing path. Open banking has moved from framework to execution with SAMA’s Open Banking Lab. Businesses that build in line with these regulatory milestones will grow faster than those that treat compliance as an afterthought.”

From Abulhasan’s perspective, the takeaway for fintech founders in the region is clear. “Build for instant payments, build for biometric authentication, and build for local rails first,” he declares. “Merchants that do will stay ahead of customer demand, not chase it.” Abulhasan follows that up with three hard-won lessons from his journey building Tap Payments—starting with a declaration that local always wins. “In the GCC, national schemes like Saudi Arabia’s mada, Kuwait’s KNET, and Bahrain’s Benefit drive real volume,” he explains. “Relying on global players like Visa and Mastercard alone will cap your conversion. Merchants need to support what customers actually use and trust, while keeping the experience consistent. That is why we created one integration that connects to every payment method.”

Tap Payments’ Ali Abulhasan with Mastercard’s Maria Parpou. Mastercard partnered with Tap Payments to introduce a global-first Click to Pay with Payment Passkey service for secure e-commerce transactions.

Such an approach has also come to define how Tap works with players across the fintech ecosystem. “Our strategy is simple: partner where it creates more value for merchants,” Abulhasan says. “We go deep with national schemes, because that is where conversion improves and costs fall. By routing transactions over the right network and keeping authentication native to the device, we make the experience better for customers and safer for risk. We also keep expanding acceptance choice. Beyond global cards and wallets, we support the regional methods merchants ask for every day such as mada, KNET, Benefit, etc., plus BNPL options where they fit the basket. Choice is not just a feature; it is revenue.”

Abulhasan’s second pointer for the region’s fintech entrepreneurs is that compliance must absolutely be treated as core to their products. “Settlement timing, data rules, and know your business (KYB) requirements differ in every market,” he points out. “If you treat them as afterthoughts, your roadmap slows later. At Tap Payments, we build with licensing and reporting in place from day one, so that merchants don’t hit a wall when they expand.”

Here, Abulhasan proudly notes that Tap Payments holds one of the widest sets of licenses in the GCC. “With full approvals across every GCC market, we now operate with the same confidence merchants expect from their banks,” he shares. “It shortens bank due diligence, opens up local clearing and payouts, and builds trust with enterprise buyers. For startups, compliance is not a cost; it is a route to market. The moment your product touches funds, your risk is shared with regulators and partners. When licensing, audits, and reporting are built into the roadmap from day one, expansion accelerates instead of stalling. The markets moving fastest today are those aligning rails, rules, and customer experience at the same time.”

Finally, to round out his playbook for the region’s fintech founders, Abulhasan points to scale—not as a milestone, but as an operating feature. “We onboard thousands of merchants weekly, not dozens,” Abulhasan reveals. “That forces us to design application programming interfaces (APIs), software development kits (SDKs), and plugins that hide regional complexity, while giving businesses full control of risk, routing, and payouts.” Tap Payments’ investment in platform ecosystems underscores this approach, with Abulhasan sharing, “Our plugins and developer tools make it easy for marketplaces and retailers to launch quickly, then scale across borders, without rebuilding payments each time.”

All of this is also enabling Tap Payments to contribute to the next chapter of the region’s fintech landscape—an evolution that Abulhasan believes is already underway. “What excites us the most is the shift to payments as a product advantage,” he says. “When the rails are instant and the rules are clear, payments move from back office to growth driver. That future is arriving fastest in the GCC, and it is the future we are building toward.”

Pictured in the lead image is Ali Abulhasan, co-founder and CEO of Tap Payments. All images courtesy of Tap Payments.

This article first appeared in a special edition of Inc. Arabia created for Money20/20 Middle East in September 2025. To read the full issue online, click here.