UAE shoppers are increasingly using payment methods beyond traditional bank cards, with telco wallets, buy now, pay later services and direct bank transfers gaining ground, according to retail industry executives.
Paul Carey, executive vice-president for cards, payments and fintech at Al-Futtaim, said the payments landscape had changed significantly over the past five years. While cards remain the dominant payment method, he said alternative channels were expanding rapidly.
The comments came as Al-Futtaim announced a strategic partnership with Juspay, a global payments technology company, which will serve as the retailer’s payment orchestration partner across its brands and markets.
Carey said payments had previously been dominated by cash and cards, but consumers now have a much wider range of options. Buy now, pay later services have become widespread, while open finance is allowing customers to make direct bank-to-bank payments.
Central banks are also supporting the development of new payment infrastructure in the UAE and other markets. The UAE has introduced Jaywan, its local debit card, while instant payment services are also emerging.
Al-Futtaim said its partnership with India-based Juspay would support payment processing across its different businesses and geographic markets.
Carey said between 30% and 50% of spending across Al-Futtaim’s businesses now takes place online, although the proportion varies depending on the individual business.
He also pointed to the early emergence of cryptocurrencies and stablecoins as part of the changing payments landscape.
Nakul Kothari, head of Asia-Pacific and the Middle East at Juspay, said the expansion of cross-border commerce was creating additional challenges for merchants as customers increasingly used different payment methods and currencies.
Research indicates that alternative payment systems could account for a much larger share of cross-border transactions across the Middle East in the coming years.
A study by payments company Nium and financial research firm Celent found that banks in the Middle East expect stablecoins to represent an average 10.4% of outgoing cross-border business payment volumes by 2035, compared with 1.6% in 2025.
Tokenised deposits are expected to rise from 1.2% to 6.2% over the same period, while central bank digital currencies could increase from 0.6% to 4.1%.
Combined, stablecoins, tokenised deposits and central bank digital currencies could account for 20.7% of payment volumes by 2035, compared with 3.4% in 2025, the study found.
Banks also expect Swift’s share of cross-border payment volumes to decline from 77.2% to 55%.
The findings were based on responses from 40 banks and 40 businesses across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar.
Despite expectations of faster adoption, challenges remain. About 53% of banks said they were struggling to establish a business case for the newer technologies, while half said the technology was not yet mature enough for wider use.
