Gulf Payments, Audited: The Growth Is Wholesale and the Users Are Dormant

A denominator check on SARIE, Aani and the 85% cashless milestone across Saudi Arabia and the UAE, 2026

Twelve and a half million registered users. Seventy-four licensed institutions. Three seconds to settle. That is the April 2026 scorecard for Aani, the UAE’s national instant payment platform, and every number in it is real (Al Etihad Payments, April 2026). The scorecard also contains the number its own release barely mentions: around 25,000 transfers a day sent by mobile number. Divide 25,000 by 12,500,000. That is one transfer per five hundred registered users per day, on the platform the press release calls a key pillar of daily financial transactions.

This piece runs the same division across the Gulf’s headline payment numbers, Saudi and Emirati, and labels the denominator under each. Three groups of figures cannot all mean what their headlines say they mean, and the difference is not fraud. It is the gap between wholesale settlement and retail usage, between registered stock and active flow, between transaction counts and money moved. Read the denominators correctly and the two national stories stop competing and start agreeing.

Ledger one: Aani’s growth rate disagrees with itself

Start with the United Arab Emirates and one metric followed across three official statements. In February 2025, Aani reported 1.5 million registered users (Al Etihad Payments, February 2025). In April 2026, the scheme reported more than 12.5 million, alongside a stated average monthly growth rate of 10 percent through 2025 (Al Etihad Payments, April 2026). Check the arithmetic. The endpoints are 8.3 times apart over fourteen months, which compounds to roughly 16 percent a month, not 10. Ten percent a month from the February 2025 base needs about 22 months to travel the same distance, arriving in December 2026, not April.

The same release states a “sixfold” year-on-year increase in transfers during 2025. The Central Bank of the UAE’s own later accounting, published in August 2026, puts 2025 transaction growth at around 183 percent, which is a factor of 2.8, not 6 (CBUAE via Adjoltz, August 2026). Both numbers carry official weight. They are not necessarily in conflict, because transfers and transactions are different flows, but neither release defines which is which, and a reader quoting the wrong one is off by more than double.

There is a third point on the curve. The central bank’s August 2026 material says more than 11.7 million customers had enrolled by the end of 2025 (CBUAE via Adjoltz, August 2026). From 11.7 million in December 2025 to 12.5 million in April 2026 is 6.8 percent over four months, about 1.7 percent a month. The series that grew 16 percent a month through 2025 then slowed to 1.7 percent a month in early 2026. Every one of these statements is an official number. They do not form one curve.

Ledger two: SARIE’s headline growth belongs to the banks

Now Saudi Arabia, where the denominator problem runs through the wholesale leg of the national settlement system. SARIE, the real-time gross settlement system operated by the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA), moved SR 17,777.1 billion in the first quarter of 2026, up 16.1 percent year on year (SAMA Q1 2026 bulletin, via BTW Media, 2026). Inside that total, customer payments were SR 4,496.6 billion and interbank settlement was SR 12,735.8 billion. The two published legs add to 17,232.4 billion, leaving SR 544.7 billion, about 3 percent of the quarter, in an unnamed residual.

The second quarter sharpens the split. Total value grew 12.7 percent year on year, but customer payments grew only 2.2 percent, down from 8.2 percent growth in the first quarter, while the interbank leg kept growing near 19 percent (SAMA Q2 2026 bulletin, via ArabicDir, 2026). Put the three lines together and the headline tells a different story than the parts: the double-digit growth that gets quoted is mostly banks settling with each other, an economy building at Vision 2030 pace, while the leg that touches households decelerated for two straight quarters. Quoting “SARIE grew 16 percent” as evidence of consumer payment adoption divides the wrong numerator by the wrong denominator.

Table 1: SARIE settlement value by leg, with year-on-year growth

Leg Q1 2026 value (SR billion) Q1 yoy Q2 2026 yoy What the denominator measures
Total value 17,777.1 +16.1% +12.7% All settlement on the RTGS rail
Interbank 12,735.8 +20.5% +18.9% Banks settling with banks
Customer payments 4,496.6 +8.2% +2.2% Money moved for households and firms
Unnamed residual ~544.7 not stated not stated Published total minus the two legs

Source: SAMA 🔗 quarterly bulletins, Q1 and Q2 2026 (site home), as reported by BTW Media and ArabicDir, 2026

Ledger three: 85 percent cashless, by count not by value

The third ledger is the one quoted most and measured least. Saudi electronic payments covered 85 percent of retail transaction volume in 2025, up from 79 percent in 2024 and 70 percent in 2023, and the Vision 2030 target of 70 percent was reached in 2023, two years early (SAMA bulletin via Arab News, 2025). The number is real and the milestone is real. The denominator is transaction count: 14.6 billion electronic transactions in 2025, of which POS accounted for 11.5 billion.

Run the value side of the same quarter and the picture moves. In the first quarter of 2026, POS terminals processed about 2.98 billion transactions worth SR 189.7 billion, an average ticket of roughly SR 64, while ATM withdrawals ran about 359 million transactions worth SR 136.8 billion (SAMA Q1 2026, via BTW Media, 2026). Cash withdrawn from machines in that single quarter equals about 72 percent of the value spent at terminals, and 2025 as a whole saw SR 393.8 billion still pulled from ATMs. Count the transactions and Saudi Arabia is 85 percent digital. Weight them by riyals and a large, quietly persistent cash economy remains, concentrated in the small everyday tickets where the terminal rental is hardest to justify.

The growth rates inside the retail layer confirm where the marginal transaction went. Mada e-commerce sales grew 32.3 percent year on year in the second quarter of 2026, reaching SR 101.4 billion, while all-retail POS sales grew 6.8 percent year on year in July and fell 4.8 percent quarter on quarter (SAMA bulletins, via Seanewsdesk, 2026). The online channel grows four times faster than the terminal channel because it is where account-to-account payment can actually displace the card, not because Saudis suddenly buy more.

Ledger four: coverage is not usage

Back to the Emirates for the audit’s cleanest ratio. Aani’s 774,000 accepting merchants, against roughly one million registered businesses in the country, is close to saturation of every business with a bank account and a terminal (Al Etihad Payments, April 2026). Coverage, solved. Usage is the other row of the same table: 25,000 phone-number transfers a day, about 9.1 million a year if the run rate holds, across a registered base larger than most measures of the country’s adult population (AEP, April 2026; annual figure calculated).

The scheme’s defenders would rightly say proxy transfers are one feature among several, that QR payments and request-to-pay do not show up in that daily count. True, and no published number shows them either. The asymmetry is the point: the coverage numbers are published at every board meeting, the usage numbers exist in one line, and the ratio between them is the actual state of the adoption story. By October 2026 the registered base had reached 14.65 million users and 875,000 merchants across 78 institutions (Al Etihad Payments via Adjoltz, October 2026). The stock keeps compounding. The one flow the scheme does publish remains, on its own scorecard, small.

Ledger five: when the rails moved, the totals moved with them

The Emirates supplies one more denominator trap, and it sits inside the instant payment story itself. The UAE’s older instant rail, the Immediate Payment Instruction (IPI), processed 33.8 million transactions worth AED 168.8 billion in 2025, down from 67.5 million worth AED 225.4 billion in 2024 (CBUAE via Adjoltz, August 2026). Read casually, that is instant payments shrinking by half in a year. Read with the denominator in hand, it is traffic migrating to Aani, which absorbed the flow while its own reporting separated the two rails. The same central bank release notes it doubled the IPI per-transaction limit from AED 25,000 to AED 50,000 and credits that move for 2024 growth, another reminder that limit changes, not behavior, can drive a year’s headline.

The card side of the Emirates shows the mirror image of stability. The national switch UAESWITCH processed 663 million ATM and point-of-sale transactions in 2025, of which 560.7 million were POS, and debit cards carried 522.6 million of those against 38.1 million on prepaid, with debit POS transactions up 4 percent on the year (CBUAE via Adjoltz, April 2026 and August 2026). Debit dominance above 93 percent of switch POS volume is itself a denominator fact worth carrying into any card-scheme revenue model: this is a market that pays from its own account balance, not from credit lines, and the national Jaywan scheme exists precisely to keep that flow domestic.

The merchant side of the same arithmetic

Every ratio above eventually lands on a merchant’s fee line, so finish the division there. Take a restaurant processing 1,000 card tickets a quarter at the average POS ticket of SAR 56.76, about SR 56,760 of volume. At an ad valorem merchant fee anywhere between 0.5 and 2 percent, the card cost runs SAR 284 to 1,135 per quarter against terminal rental and connectivity that are largely fixed (ArabicDir, 2026). Shrink the ticket and the fixed cost eats the fee alive, which is why small merchants remained cash’s strongest constituency in 2026 even in an 85-percent-digital market.

The institutions that own the terminals feel the same squeeze from the other side. Value per terminal in Saudi fell about 9.4 percent while terminal numbers grew 4.2 percent, and SAMA’s governor counted 371 fintech companies in the kingdom by September 2026, 307 of them inside the open banking framework, with more than SAR 30 billion invested in the sector by mid-2026 and eight new licences granted in the second quarter alone across BNPL, payments, aggregation and open banking (ArabicDir, 2026; Seanewsdesk, 2026). None of that capacity expands the terminal base much. It divides one fee pool among more claimants, which is the arithmetic meaning of “fintech growth” in a market that has finished converting its transaction count.

The UAE’s merchant discount rates frame the ceiling on that fight: credit card MDR runs 1.5 to 2.8 percent and debit from 0.8 percent in 2026, published ranges that account-to-account rails like Aani are built to undercut (Gulf Business via library records, 2026). When the instant rail’s marginal cost approaches zero and the card rail’s floor is 80 basis points, the entire business case for open banking payment initiation, which SAMA began licensing in March 2026, is the distance between those two numbers.

Table 2: Channel economics behind the Gulf payment headlines

Metric Value Period Denominator note
IPI transactions 33.8M (was 67.5M in 2024) 2025 Legacy UAE instant rail; flow moved to Aani
UAESWITCH POS 560.7M transactions 2025 Domestic debit and prepaid only
Debit share of switch POS ~93% 2025 522.6M of 560.7M
Average Saudi POS ticket ~SAR 64 Q1 2026 SR 189.7B over 2.98B transactions
Fee on 1,000 tickets at SAR 56.76 SAR 284 to 1,135 per quarter At 0.5 to 2 percent MDR
Saudi value per terminal -9.4%, devices +4.2% 2026 Fixed fee pool divided by more terminals

Source: CBUAE statistics via Adjoltz 🔗, April and August 2026; SAMA bulletins via BTW Media and ArabicDir, 2026

How to read the next release

The audit method is portable, and the next quarterly cycle will supply fresh material. Three habits cover most of it. First, ask which side of the wholesale line a growth number lives on before quoting it: the instant leg of SARIE alone ran 93.7 million transactions worth SR 96.87 billion in August 2026, with June volume up 26.1 percent year on year, numbers that describe rail usage, not consumer adoption (SAMA bulletins via Arab News and Seanewsdesk, 2026). Second, pair every stock number with the one flow number in the same release, the way 12.5 million registrations pairs with 25,000 daily proxy transfers. Third, when two official growth rates describe one year, sixfold and 183 percent, assume different denominators until a release defines them, and quote the range rather than picking a side.

Apply the same discipline to the stock numbers still compounding. By October 2026, Aani reported 14.65 million registered users, 875,000 merchants and 78 licensed institutions (Al Etihad Payments via Adjoltz, October 2026). The registration curve is real and will keep compounding as banks push opt-ins through their app bases; nothing in it measures whether the person behind the registration has ever sent a payment. The day either scheme publishes an active-user or monthly-unique-sender count, this audit gets a denominator worth building on. Until then, the honest interval for Aani’s true usage sits somewhere between the published flow, one transfer per five hundred users a day, and the coverage headline, and no one can currently narrow it.

What survives the audit

None of these findings indicts either scheme. They do reprice three headlines.

  • “Gulf payments are growing 16 to 18 percent a year.” The wholesale leg is; the consumer leg in Saudi decelerated to 2.2 percent by the second quarter of 2026.
  • “The UAE’s instant rail has 12.5 million users.” It has 12.5 million registrations, one published flow line, and no published active-user count.
  • “Saudi Arabia is 85 percent cashless.” By transaction count, yes. By value, cash withdrawals still equaled roughly 72 percent of POS spend in the first quarter of 2026, on the two channels’ own figures.

For anyone underwriting payments revenue in the Gulf, the usable conclusion is about where the money is. The consumer rails are mature and their fee pools are contested, which is why SAMA licensed open banking players through 2026 and why every new licence divides the same terminal economics among more participants. The growth that pays for infrastructure is sitting in the interbank leg and in the gap between 85 percent by count and roughly half by value. Divide by the right denominator and the investment case changes shape entirely.

Methodology

Data as of November 2026. Primary metrics: UAE registered Aani users and daily proxy transfers from Al Etihad Payments releases (April 2026, cross-checked against February 2025 and CBUAE August 2026 material); Saudi SARIE settlement value by leg and retail channel volumes from SAMA quarterly and monthly bulletins, accessed through published reporting. Algorithm: growth rates recomputed from endpoints (1.5 million to 12.5 million over fourteen months, compounded monthly) and compared with stated rates; residuals computed as published totals minus published legs; value per transaction computed as channel value over channel count. Denominators labelled for every load-bearing figure: count versus value for the 85 percent claim, stock versus flow for registrations, wholesale versus customer legs for SARIE. No adjustments: no seasonal correction, no currency conversion, no restatement of official figures; where two official growth numbers for one year disagree (sixfold versus 183 percent for 2025 transfers), both are reported without adjudication. Estimates: merchant ratios use approximate UAE business counts; the annualized 9.1 million proxy transfers assume the April daily figure holds.

Limitations

  • The SAMA residual is not published with definitions; the SR 544.7 billion gap may be a named Arabic-bulletin category.
  • The daily proxy-transfer count is Aani’s only published flow; QR and request-to-pay volumes are unmeasured.
  • SAMA leg figures rely on secondary reporting of the bulletins, cross-checked across two independent reports.

Sources

This article was prepared by the expert team at Global Infinity Labs, drawing on insights and data provided through its MCP data services.

About Global Infinity Labs

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