Designing the way people shop, earn, and save.
17,000
Daily app downloads
+3 million
Active shoppers
Top 5
Shopping apps
4.5 million
Clicks to merchants
Building MENA's best shopping app
Tabby offers financial freedom by empowering users to make the most of their money and take control of their spending. Our vision was to build a shopping super app—a one-stop hub for financial flexibility that would also attract merchants eager to offer Tabby as a payment method.
4.8 ⭐
App store rating
4.7⭐
App store rating
Laying the design foundations
The first step when joining an early-stage start-up is a design audit with product, marketing, and engineering. It gives the team a deep understanding of what’s working and what needs improvement, as well as a clear picture of the current state of the product.
Through this exercise, there were obvious visual design improvements that we could make, but it also gave us ideas on how we can develop the app to make it the starting point of someone’s shopping journey and not just a place to track their BNPL payments. A cashback product was already in the works, which was a great segway to positioning ourselves as more than just a payments app.
Building a marketplace
For Tabby’s Cashback to succeed, users needed to shop through Tabby’s app via redirection links. To ensure clarity, we:
Featured deals and brands on the homepage.
Highlighted upcoming payments and spending limits.
Clearly labeled “Split in 4” vs. “Earn Cashback.”
Enabled cashback tracking, withdrawals, and usage for payments.
Through focused UX and visual design iterations, we built trust and transparency, helping users manage spending responsibly while earning rewards.
Constantly learning and iterating
With the marketplace as our starting point, we constantly tracked metrics and user behaviour to understand how people shop. It helped us shape the app and add features to the roadmap based on time, effort and impact.
We introduced the Tabby card—a seamless way to use Tabby in store, flexible payment terms, the option to delay a payment, withdrawing cashback as Amazon gift cards to remove minimum limits, etc.
Tabby soon became one of the top payment options in the region
33%
Increase in AOV
+2.2 million
4.5 million
We built a bold, aspirational, and edgy brand.
I led Tabby's rebrand alongside the Head of Marketing, conducting deep groundwork to ensure our brand’s vision was clear.
We interviewed leadership to identify the three core pillars of our brand, explore the brand’s origins, and understand the company’s aspirations. This comprehensive insight allowed us to create a powerful brief for the design agency, bringing our brand to life with a fresh logo and a refined brand identity.
One of the most iconic elements became the ‘T’ logo mark, reimagined as a currency symbol—a visual anchor for Tabby as a one-stop hub for all things money. This direction aligned perfectly with our Tabby card vision, which was in its early discovery phase, and positioned it as the primary way for people to spend their money through Tabby.
Impact
This rebrand has transformed how Tabby looks and feels, establishing it as one of the region’s most recognized brands.
Laying the foundations of Tabby’s design language has been a proud achievement, seeing it evolve and resonate with such a broad audience. Watching the brand grow and adapt has been inspiring, and it’s exciting to see how the team continues to build on this vision for future growth.
Key Learnings and takeaways
Adapting to a Fast-Paced Environment: Navigating the shift from being a solo designer to leading a team of 10 across six countries taught me how to stay agile, focused, and adaptable in a high-growth setting.
Strategic Product Scaling: I learned to balance ambitious ideas with practical execution, scaling down products to MVPs when needed and building them back up to realize the broader vision.
Building a Recognizable Brand: Creating one of the most recognized brands in the region was both inspiring and fulfilling, underscoring the power of brand identity in shaping market presence.
Resource Planning and Hiring: Knowing when to expand the team and plan resources effectively became essential skills, ensuring we could meet business demands without overextending capacity.
