MENA’s Digital Gift Card Markets: A Country-by-Country Research Atlas

Digital gift cards are already a practical product across much of the Middle East and North Africa. The harder questions are where the evidence supports a market-size claim, what a recipient can redeem, and which rules apply to the organisation holding the value. This study addresses those questions separately across 22 markets, with two interactive maps, country profiles, comparable tables, Statista consumer data and primary regulatory sources.

The strongest observable regional pattern is a shared distribution layer over distinct local products. A platform can advertise several countries while the gift itself remains denominated in one currency, restricted to one country and subject to a particular merchant's expiry and refund terms. Electronic delivery does not make value borderless. A GCC-wide corporate programme may therefore require six local catalogues, several contractual issuers and different regulatory analyses.

The market estimates also need careful interpretation. Public commercial reports use different geographic boundaries and product definitions. Some country figures cannot be reconciled with a regional report from the same research publisher. This study preserves the published figures and identifies those conflicts. It does not turn them into a synthetic MENA total or invent numbers for countries with no comparable public series.

Research date: 18 September 2026. Market numbers are attributed commercial estimates or forecasts, rather than audited national sales. Product terms establish documented availability, not adoption. Legal sections identify relevant rules and classification questions, not a determination that a particular provider holds every required permission.

How to read this research atlas

MENA has no single universal membership list. This editorial atlas covers Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. Turkey, Pakistan and Malta are outside this study. A commercial report that includes Turkey or covers only the six GCC countries consequently measures a different geography.

Western Sahara appears separately as geographic context and receives no market value in the dataset. Boundaries and labels are for navigation and do not express a position on sovereignty. Natural Earth supplies the geographic outlines; the research team supplies the evidence categories. Every country remains selectable, including those with missing quantitative observations. [S01]

T01. What each measure means

Map 1 groups the available 2025 country estimates into transparent value bands. It is an atlas of attributed figures, not a ranking of independently measured demand. Map 2 classifies the type of programme evidence. Its colours say what was documented, not how mature or attractive a country is. Country panels link directly to supporting sources and the relevant section of the article.

Additional country numbers: markets, recipients and programme terms

The following tables expand the country evidence with commercial forecasts, original survey results, issuer disclosures and product parameters. Each answers a different question. A denomination is an amount offered on a card; a balance cap is a contractual ceiling; a respondent percentage is an opinion or reported experience; an issuer count describes one business. None substitutes for national sales. Missing country totals remain unfilled.

T02. Additional market estimates and growth indicators

IMARC's public methodology is limited, and its stated forecast rate is not reconciled to its endpoints. No intervening years are calculated. Its five segment percentages concern different denominators and must not be added. The Saudi percentage belongs to Mordor's GCC coverage, not this atlas's MENA definition. Qatar's figure describes a forecast published for an earlier period, not observed 2026 growth. Iran's extra observation extends its digital-only series without dividing it by another publisher's total.

T03. More usable numbers for Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman

These numbers provide concrete purchasing parameters even where national volumes are unavailable. Blue's common conditions permit partial spending and restrict redemption to the issuing country. Seef's figures describe its virtual-card application. They do not apply automatically to other Bahraini issuers. Currency ranges are retained in their original units and are not ranked by purchasing power.

T04. Quantitative programme evidence across North Africa

The new Libyan merchant evidence changes the programme map: Libya now has documented local digital gift delivery, alongside foreign-code distribution. This is a change in the evidence classification, not a market-size estimate. Morocco's iris.ma evidence likewise establishes an explicit emailed format alongside the previously documented Decathlon offer. No additional defensible national gift-card series was established for Djibouti, Mauritania or Sudan.

T05. Israel: issuer-reported gift behaviour and values

Sources: BUYME's 2024 employee-gift review [S104] and 2025 platform review [S105]. These self-reported operational figures add a different perspective from national commercial estimates. Sector means do not reveal the distribution of gift values or market-wide averages.

T06. Other Levant markets: amounts, fees and restrictions

Syria's mixed digital-product catalogue count and Yemen's app-download threshold were excluded from these gift-card figures because they cannot establish gift-only transactions or local users. This keeps measurable programme terms separate from misleading substitutes for market demand. The source register records those exclusions.

T07. Original YouGov and YOUGotaGift consumer comparisons

The original UAE infographic [S107] and Saudi infographic [S108] were visually read. Fieldwork ran from 20 to 27 February 2024; publication was 3 April 2024. Subgroup bases and uncertainty intervals are not supplied in the infographics. The age rows ask different questions and must not be compared as digital adoption. Preferences and reported experience are not sales, and these observations do not update the historical Statista series.

T08. Cross-border digital gifting observed by one platform

The platform's cross-border analysis [S109] describes geographic sender reach. It does not disclose the number or value of gifts in this table, represent every issuer, or establish permission to redeem a gift across borders. The observation is historical, not a 2026 count.

Why the regional forecasts do not produce one MENA total

T09. Regional report definitions and published values

Sources: PayNXT360 regional report listing [S02]; Mordor Intelligence regional report [S03].

The disagreement is too large to present as a normal confidence interval. More fundamentally, the products and country sets differ. An average of the two would have no defensible denominator. Nor is it reasonable to apply one publisher's digital share to another publisher's country total.

There is also an unresolved reconciliation problem. The selected PayNXT360 country estimates for Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE alone exceed that publisher's USD8.7 billion regional 2025 figure. The Israeli country listing reports USD7,359.6 million, while the dated Saudi and UAE releases report USD1.85 billion and USD2.20 billion respectively. This is an arithmetic conflict requiring publisher clarification, not evidence that the missing countries have negative value. The country map labels these as attributed estimates and does not calculate regional shares. [S04]

Editorial analysis: the useful commercial conclusion is that vendor forecasts support investigating a sizeable category, while primary product and legal evidence is more dependable for deciding how a specific programme can operate. The country profiles therefore spend as much attention on acceptance, issuance and restrictions as on headline size. A purchaser evaluating a large investment should obtain the full definitions and a reconciled country workbook before using these numbers in a financial model.

Consumer evidence: gift intent and payment behaviour measure different things

Two kinds of consumer research help explain the opportunity without pretending to measure the same phenomenon. Occasion surveys ask what people intend to give or would like to receive. Payment-method surveys ask which instruments people have used. These sources answer different questions; their percentages cannot be added or used interchangeably.

T10. Eid gift-card intentions in Saudi Arabia and the UAE

Toluna's 2025 Ramadan and Eid study supplies these observations for respondents planning gifts. The online fieldwork ran from 24 to 29 January 2025 among people aged 18-60; the prior-year comparison was fielded from 19 to 24 January 2024. The overall 2025 samples were 510 in the UAE and 500 in Saudi Arabia, larger than the gift-planner subsets shown above. These are intentions for an occasion, not measured purchases. [S05]

The two-point UAE movement should not be described as a proven market decline. The public table does not establish the statistical significance of that difference, and a seasonal intention measure cannot explain annual issuance. What it does show is that gift cards were a recognisable gifting option in both samples. Merchants can investigate recipients' choices, rather than assuming that digital availability automatically displaces cash, perfume, clothing or other gifts.

T11. Statista: prepaid cards and vouchers by channel

Source: authenticated Statista Consumer Insights tables for Saudi Arabia [S06] and the United Arab Emirates [S07], accessed on 18 September 2026. Both pages were published on 7 February 2024 and identify April 2023 as the release date. The displayed latest fieldwork runs from 4 April 2022 to 17 March 2023. Statista describes the residential online population aged 18-64, 12,000+ respondents per country, rolling twelve-month responses and multiple selections.

This is useful historical channel context, with a deliberately narrow interpretation: respondents could select prepaid cards and vouchers among the methods they had used. It is neither a spending allocation nor a measure restricted to gifts. The 2023 values cannot be relabelled as 2026 adoption just because the pages were accessed in 2026. Likewise, a difference between Saudi and UAE survey responses does not establish which country generated more gift-card value.

Editorial analysis: the practical implication for product design is to connect delivery with redemption. An email recipient may want an online checkout, while an employer may want a reward usable in a physical store. A digital message with an incompatible redemption channel can still fail the recipient. Product research should therefore ask about the intended merchant, channel and occasion as well as the attractiveness of receiving a code.

T12. Evidence that should remain separate in a commercial presentation

No general digital-payment or population metric is used to fill missing gift-card observations on either map. This preserves the distinction between a market that lacks public measurement and a market that has no activity.

Where digital gift programmes are documented

The second map distinguishes local digital delivery or redemption, historical local programmes, advertised distribution of foreign codes, incomplete or announced evidence, and unverified availability. The details explain the exact scope for each country.

GCC: six markets, different rules for stored gift value

The GCC has a visible digital gift-card ecosystem, but a country comparison needs two separate answers: how much gift value a research publisher estimates, and which products a recipient can actually obtain and use. Public evidence answers the second question more consistently. This review verifies electronic programmes across Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman. It does not establish a digital-only market total or a nationally representative adoption rate for every country.

The country sections below distinguish merchant issuers from distributors and describe specific products rather than assuming that all gift cards in a country share one expiry rule. Electronic delivery, online purchasing, online redemption and cross-border acceptance are separate characteristics. A code received by email might work only in a physical shop; a card bought online might arrive by courier.

Comparable market estimates, with a source-version warning

The dated Q1 2026 PayNXT360 research announcements distributed by Research and Markets provide a usable published vintage for Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Figures below cover gift cards broadly. The public summaries do not supply a complete reconciliation between funded value, transaction value and provider revenue. No digital share is applied to these totals.

T13. Comparable market estimates, with a source-version warning

These are commercial estimates, not administrative counts. Conversion from billions to millions changes the display unit, not the precision. Missing values must remain blank on a market map. Neither population nor general payment activity can fill the gaps.

Saudi Arabia also requires an explicit qualification. Its current direct PayNXT360 page advertises USD4,170.3 million for 2026, despite carrying the same Q1 2026 edition label as the release above. This review retains the dated release as its comparison vintage and records the unresolved conflict. It does not imply the lower figure has been independently proved correct. [S10]