title: United Arab Emirates — Payment Corridor Dynamics | World Payments Monitor canonical: https://payments.gi/jurisdictions/united-arab-emirates/w5/ publisher: Asymmetric Intelligence ### W5 Payment Corridor Dynamics limited signal Probable confirmed 2026-06-27 The UAE is one of the world's largest remittance-source markets (88-90% expatriate population), with principal outbound corridors to India, Pakistan and the Philippines. Cross-border rails include SWIFT-based correspondent flows settled through UAEFTS, the Arab Monetary Fund's BUNA multi-currency RTGS (which includes AED) and the GCC's AFAQ system; the domestic Aani instant-payment platform (launched Oct 2023) is being linked internationally, notably to India's UPI. Exchange houses (Al Ansari, Lulu, Al Fardan) remain central to retail remittance, alongside Wise/Remitly/Western Union and emerging CBDC corridors (Digital Dirham, mBridge). Standing sub-brief · as of 7 July 2026 82 words · last cycle 2026-09-21 #### Payment Corridor Dynamics The UAE is among the world's largest remittance-source markets, with 2022 outward remittances of AED 145.7 billion, led by India (31%), Pakistan (12%) and the Philippines (8%), and Aani is being linked internationally to India's UPI while BUNA and AFAQ provide regional multi-currency settlement. #### Outlook The UAE-India corridor is opening via the Aani-UPI instant-payments linkage, while the UAE-GCC corridor is integrating through AFAQ, which covers six GCC currencies including the dirham, and a planned GCC-wide real-time gross settlement system. Periodic update · new data 2026-09-28 #### Payment Corridor Dynamics On the UAE mainland, retail payments are permitted only using CBUAE-approved Payment Tokens; use of other crypto assets for general merchant checkout is prohibited outright. Foreign Payment Tokens, meaning non-AED-denominated stablecoins registered rather than licensed under the PTSR, are limited to narrow use-cases such as paying for virtual assets, rather than being usable for general retail payment purposes. This is a deliberate monetary-sovereignty constraint on the payments corridor: the regulatory architecture channels domestic retail payment activity through the fully-licensed, fully-reserve-backed Dirham Payment Token track, while confining foreign-denominated tokens to a materially narrower permitted-use lane. This corridor restriction is sourced from a lower-tier reference source this cycle, and its precise interaction with the UAE's broader cross-border payment and capital-flow architecture has not been independently mapped beyond the specific retail-checkout and virtual-asset-purchase use-cases described. What is clear is that this restriction reinforces the two-tier licensing structure described under this brief's market-access coverage: the corridor-level restriction on foreign token use gives practical teeth to the licensing distinction between Dirham and Foreign Payment Tokens. #### Outlook Further mapping of how this mainland retail-payment restriction interacts with cross-border payment flows involving free-zone entities registered as Foreign Payment Token Issuers would sharpen this module's coverage in a future cycle, particularly as adoption of licensed Dirham Payment Tokens such as AE Coin continues to scale. **2 earlier distinct update(s)** Periodic update · new data 2026-09-08 #### Payment Corridor Dynamics Aani, the UAE's national instant-payments platform, has surpassed 12.5 million registered users and is now connected to 74 licensed financial institutions, comprising roughly 85% of banks, 10% of exchange houses and 5% of digital wallets and finance companies. Transfer volumes on the platform are up sixfold year-on-year, and approximately 774,000 merchants now use Aani as a primary payment solution, evidence of a bank-and-nonbank-inclusive instant-payments rail scaling across the full range of licensed participant types. Cabinet Resolution No. 176M/4M of 2026 authorises the UAE Ministry of Finance to accept Aani and Jaywan for federal service fees and fines, the first federal entity to adopt either rail for this purpose; Aani settles up to AED 50,000 per transaction in under 10 seconds, embedding the domestic instant-payments rail directly into federal revenue collection. Jaywan, the UAE's national domestic card scheme established in 2024 and operated by Al Etihad Payments, began live card issuance in July 2026, with First Abu Dhabi Bank and Commercial Bank of Dubai as its first issuing banks, reducing reliance on international card schemes for domestic transactions. #### Outlook With Aani now embedded in federal fee and fine collection and continuing to grow at a sixfold year-on-year pace, and with Jaywan's card issuance now live across at least two major issuing banks, the corridor mix for domestic UAE payments is shifting further toward homegrown instant-payment and card rails and away from exclusive reliance on international card-scheme processing for domestic transactions. Periodic update · new data 2026-08-11 #### Payment Corridor Dynamics Aani, the instant-payments platform operated by Al Etihad Payments, has crossed 12.5 million users according to Q1 2026 reporting, continuing a scaling trajectory for the UAE's domestic real-time-payments rail. Al Etihad Payments also operates Jaywan, the UAE's domestic card scheme, UAESWITCH, and the Wages Protection System, giving the operator a broad footprint across retail instant payments, card-scheme infrastructure and payroll-compliance rails. This breadth is relevant to corridor dynamics because it concentrates several distinct payment functions within a single operator's infrastructure, which shapes how payment corridors into and out of the UAE interact with domestic rails at the point of settlement. The more structurally significant development this cycle is Cabinet Resolution No. 176M/4M of 2026, which authorises Aani and Jaywan as payment channels for federal government service fees and fines, with the Ministry of Finance announced as the first implementing federal entity on 3 August 2026. This is a mandatory-adoption milestone rather than a voluntary-uptake one: it commits a federal government body to routing fee and fine payments through the domestic instant-payments rail rather than through card-scheme or legacy bank-transfer channels, a meaningful signal of the rail's perceived reliability and government-side confidence in its operational maturity. Read together, the 12.5 million user milestone and the federal mandate describe a rail that has moved past an early-adoption phase into standing infrastructure status, a maturity marker that should inform any assessment of the UAE's domestic payment corridor as a channel increasingly capable of absorbing volume that might otherwise route through card schemes or cross-border payment rails. #### Outlook The marker to watch is whether other federal government entities beyond the Ministry of Finance adopt Aani and Jaywan for fee and fine collection following the Ministry's implementation, and whether Aani's user count continues its growth trajectory beyond the 12.5 million figure reported for Q1 2026, both of which would confirm the rail's transition from consumer-adoption success to comprehensive government-side infrastructure. **Sources and findings (4)** 1. T1 [https://www.centralbank.ae/en/our-operations/payments-and-settlements/buna-arab-regional-payment-system/](https://www.centralbank.ae/en/our-operations/payments-and-settlements/buna-arab-regional-payment-system/) retrieved 2026-06-27 2. T3 [https://tabinsights.com/article/improved-cross-border-payment-systems-support-growth-in-middle-east](https://tabinsights.com/article/improved-cross-border-payment-systems-support-growth-in-middle-east) retrieved 2026-06-27 3. T3 [https://itexus.com/cross-border-payments-remittance-platforms-in-the-middle-east/](https://itexus.com/cross-border-payments-remittance-platforms-in-the-middle-east/) retrieved 2026-06-27 4. T3 [https://www.theasianbanker.com/updates-and-articles/cross-border-payments-in-the-middle-east-become-more-inclusive](https://www.theasianbanker.com/updates-and-articles/cross-border-payments-in-the-middle-east-become-more-inclusive) retrieved 2026-06-27