Unstoppable Starts Here: What Makes a Payments Partnership Work, with Tabby's Zarik Nabi and Paymentology's Jeff Parker

Quick Summary

In the final clip from Unstoppable Starts Here, filmed at Money20/20 Middle East 2026, Zarik Nabi of Tabby and Jeff Parker, CEO of Paymentology, look at the trends they are watching, from instant payments and remittance to AI and agentic commerce, why Saudi Arabia is now leading rather than following, and what makes a payments partnership succeed: speed, reliability and transparency.

What trends are Tabby watching?

Zarik sees the Middle East developing into what the West and other developed markets already have, with money moving quickly, whether through instant payments or new ways of sending remittances abroad, and payment processing getting faster and better. On AI and agentic, Tabby already uses a lot of AI across the app, in customer experience, personalisation and search, but for full-blown payment experiences, he says, "we are close, but we're not yet there."

Is the region still following the West?

Jeff thinks the region, and Saudi Arabia in particular, is now close to leading: a few years ago it watched what was happening in the West, but now it is "genuinely leading the way." He sees AI's main benefits today in operational efficiency, starting to move into product innovation, and expects that to be there within five years. He is most excited by agentic, and what it could mean for embedded finance and personalised financial products.

What makes the Tabby and Paymentology partnership work?

Jeff's view is simple: "If our clients do well, we do well." The first priority is that the platform works, all the time, quickly and efficiently. The second is working closely with Tabby to understand what it wants to deliver for its customers, because Paymentology's product development is client-led: "We're not going out there and making a market." Get reliability and quality innovation right, he says, and that demonstrates a successful partnership.

Zarik applies the same metrics to partners that customers apply to Tabby: speed, reliability and transparency. A partner has to keep up with Tabby's pace, quite literally, adapt to how Tabby builds and changes, be constantly available, and be transparent in everything from technical documentation to pricing and service delivery.

Both accept that technology is not yet bulletproof and things will sometimes go wrong. What matters is how the partners respond: working together rather than blaming each other, which, as Zarik puts it, keeps the spirit of the partnership alive.

FF NEWS TAKE:

Partnership talk is often vague, but the criteria here are concrete and the same on both sides of the table: does it work every time, does the partner move at your speed, and is it open about everything from documentation to pricing. For a fast-growing brand like Tabby, an infrastructure partner that can keep pace is the difference between launching a product and waiting for one.