Small UAE shops now use payment apps to serve customers who don't carry cash

For businesses run by one person, buying and setting a POS machine for card use could be costly and would require certain qualifications

By Abdullah Al Tekreeti

Published: Fri 3 Jan 2025, 11:47 AM

Last updated: Fri 3 Jan 2025, 9:50 PM

If you're buying from small shops and pop-ups in the country, expect to pay in cash — but this norm has started to change with the rise of digital payment apps.

Small and medium enterprises have long relied on cash or lengthy bank transfers to receive payments mainly because of limited resources. A point-of-service (POS) terminal, which allows card use, not only costs thousands of dirhams — it also requires business owners to meet the qualifications, sign up, and pay recurring fees.

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Shawki Zaitoun, a 20-year-old university student, has founded small, one-off businesses as early as high school. Through the years, payments had always been a challenge for him.

"Based on my experience from previous events, most students don’t carry cash. If I had relied on that alone, I wouldn’t have broken even,” said Zaitoun, who now sells his own perfume brand Wardlak while studying at American University of Sharjah (AUS).

As his business was student-run and largely restricted to events, he wasn't qualified to get the licence required to obtain a POS terminal for card payments.

Things changed when his friends recommended a digital payment app. Students who came to Zaitoun's shop welcomed the new payment method and were surprised that he accepted digital payments at such a small venue.

“Majority of purchases are already cashless, I believe that will be the norm at some point," he said.

Shawki Zaitoun

Looking back, the 20-year-old was thankful he didn’t end up getting a physical card reader. “Once, something or someone crashed into my venue and broke a decent amount of my stock. I was very glad I didn’t have an expensive card machine there."

How the digital payment apps work

The process may vary from one app to another but, generally, here's how they work:

A business owner downloads the app and sets up his account.
To take a payment from a customer, the business owner creates an invoice through the app, specifying the amount.
Then the app can generate either a payment link (through which a customer can enter his/her bank details or use a smartphone wallet) or a QR code (which the customer can scan).
The payment then goes into the business owner's account.

‘It made a huge difference’

For Myrna Fandy, the founder of hijab vendor Wove, payment had also been an issue.

“Many people came up to me and asked if I had a card reader because they didn’t carry cash,” said Fandy, who is also an interior designer.

Myrna Fandy

After trying a few popular digital payment options, she faced issues with lengthy withdrawal periods and delayed customer support.

When a friend recommended a certain app, Fandy decided to try it out during her store’s first few in-person pop-ups. Some customers were initially hesitant to pay through the app because they were not familiar with it but, eventually, people got used to it.

Reviewing her sales, the business owner said that she would have lost out on many customers if she had only been able to accept cash. Although she had expected this, she wasn’t able to get a physical card reader.

“Buying a card machine was such a hassle. Getting paper, maintaining it, and [dealing with] banks, it’s too much.”

Fandy believes the UAE’s shift to completely digital purchases is inevitable. “My friends and I, even my father, we never carry cash."