Middle East & North Africa · GDP rank #25

United Arab Emirates

AE · AED @ 0.2723/USD

The UAE has built the most ambitious state-led payments programme in the Gulf — Aani instant payments live since 2023 (12.5m users by May 2026), Jaywan domestic card scheme past 10m cards ahead of mandated targets, Digital Dirham retail launched March 2026, and CBUAE remains an active mBridge participant. The 88% non-citizen labour-force structure makes outbound remittance — US$45.5bn in 2024, largely to India, Pakistan and the Philippines — the anchor use case.

Tab 02

Consumer payments

How consumers actually pay: the share of cash, the stock and flow of cards, the scheme split at checkout, which mobile wallets matter, and how broadly POS acceptance reaches.

Every figure is authored against a named publisher — click the ⓘ anywhere to open the source panel with the underlying URL and access date.

Cash share of POS volume

22%

Cash share of POS value

12%

Debit-card penetration

100% of adults

Credit-card penetration

84% of adults

Payment mix

Cash vs. non-cash

The authored corpus for this country carries a single cash figure; the remainder is reported as a pooled non-cash bucket. See the card and wallet sections for the break-down within that bucket.

22%Cash

Share of POS

Cash22%
Non-cash (cards + wallets + A2A)78%

Cash behaviour

Trend: declining
Context: Cash share fell from 54% in 2019 driven by Apple Pay penetration, Dubai Metro Nol card closed-loop shift to open-loop EMV, and Aani adoption. Cash persists in blue-collar labour-intensive sectors (construction, domestic service).

Source · Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE)

Scheme share

Which networks clear the card volume

Scheme share is the split of general-purpose card purchase volume — not issuance, not count of cards. A high domestic share (e.g. UnionPay, RuPay, ELO) means a large share of card flow never touches a global scheme.

Jaywan is the UAE's domestic scheme launched June 2024; 10m+ cards by end-2025 — ahead of mandated mid-2026 milestone.

Share of card volume

Visa46%
Mastercard35%
Jaywan13%
Amex4%
Union Pay2%

Debit transactions · 2024

2.1B

Active debit cards

12.8M

Credit transactions · 2024

1.1B

Active credit cards

8.4M

Mobile wallets

Where wallets actually land

User counts are the best single scalar for wallet reach, but they understate usage intensity in markets where one super-app carries multi-digit trillions of renminbi or rupees. For flow, see the rails tab.

Active users

Apple Pay5.2M
device wallet
Samsung Pay1.8M
device wallet
e& money (formerly Etisalat Wallet)1.6M
telco wallet

Notable wallets

Apple Pay

device wallet

Operator · Apple

Highest iPhone and Apple Pay penetration in MENA after Saudi Arabia; live since October 2017.

Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE)

Samsung Pay

device wallet

Operator · Samsung

Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE)

e& money (formerly Etisalat Wallet)

telco wallet

Operator · e& (Etisalat)

e& money

Acceptance

POS terminals: 240.0k
POS per million people: 23.5k
QR acceptance: Aani QR unified standard by CBUAE; mandatory for all merchant acquirers from Oct 2024

Source · Al Etihad Payments (AEP)