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

Kuwait has verified digital gift-card availability even though this review does not have a comparable public market total. JYSK Kuwait provides a recipient-email gift-card form and expressly identifies itself as the issuer. Its stated denomination range is KWD10-KWD100, with online use in Kuwait and repeated spending until the balance is exhausted. An expiry period was not verified in the retrieved product text. It should remain unspecified rather than inherit another retailer's twelve-month rule. [S16]

YOUGotaGift's official FAQ explicitly includes Kuwait in its electronic distribution footprint. This establishes an advertised route for sending merchant gift value, not the size of local demand or the issuer status of every product in its catalogue. [S17]

Kuwait's Central Bank updated its electronic-payment instructions in May 2023. Its supervisory summary describes five licence types differentiated by activity and volume. The detailed instructions also define limited-purpose e-money and a provider category requiring a CBK no-objection certificate. These distinctions require examination of the actual issuer and merchant network; they do not justify treating every electronic voucher seller as a bank. [S18]; [S19]

A CBK circular dated 15 February 2024 addresses expiry practices by limited-purpose e-money providers that leave customers without value or service and transfer the funds to the merchant. It requires compliance with Article 24, including the customer's option of a refund to their account or an extension in the e-wallet. This concerns regulated e-money and limited-purpose e-money; it does not establish that every merchant gift card falls within those categories. [S20]

Editorial analysis: Kuwait illustrates why a catalogue-level country flag is only the beginning of diligence. The buyer still needs to know whether a gift is online-only, whether partial spending works, and whether customer support belongs to the seller or the underlying merchant.

Qatar: distinguish a digital instrument from an online order

Blue and Alshaya explicitly support electronic gift-card programmes in Qatar. However, an online gift-card listing alone is insufficient evidence of virtual issuance. Virgin Megastore Qatar's QAR100 listing describes delivery to a nominated address and redemption in stores, with one-year validity. It is consequently excluded from the digital footprint dataset. [S21]

Qatar's Payment Services Regulation makes a useful distinction. Section 6.2 exempts closed prepaid instruments used only to obtain the issuer's goods or services for limited purposes, without cash withdrawal or cash redemption, and explicitly includes brand-specific gift cards. The issuer must nevertheless inform Qatar Central Bank, which can request information. A broader multi-brand network should not be assumed to qualify for the same treatment. [S22]

Editorial analysis: the commercial question is whether the intended recipient can complete the purchase they actually want. A broad brand catalogue does not guarantee online checkout compatibility. Procurement should name the eligible country and channels and preserve the specific product terms presented at ordering, rather than relying on a regional programme description.

No nationally representative Qatar gift-card adoption percentage or comparable Q1 2026 market total was verified in this research. The programme evidence supports availability, while the market-size field remains missing.

Bahrain: an electronic footprint and an important draft-law boundary

Bahrain appears in Alshaya's explicit eGift country list and in Blue's local-currency limits. Alshaya's terms provide email delivery, partial spending and twelve months from purchase or top-up, with redemption confined to eligible brands in the country of issue. Its FAQ describes merchandise refunds returning to gift value and an extension when a refund reaches an expired card. These are programme conditions, not a universal Bahraini expiry policy. [S23]; [S24]

A regional campaign gives additional historical evidence. Samsung's January 2025 preorder promotion included a BHD20 YouGotAGift incentive for Bahrain. It demonstrates one specific promotional use case; it does not establish current availability, national spending or campaign performance. [S25]

Bahrain's Central Bank provides the financial-services regulatory framework. A February 2026 Payment Service Requirements document found during research is linked from its consultation page as a proposal with a 5 March deadline. Final adoption was not verified here, so the draft is not presented as binding law. [S26]; [S27]

Editorial analysis: for a new programme, regulatory status and commercial reach should be assessed separately. A live retail product is evidence that a product is marketed; it is not proof that a proposed different issuer, wallet or acceptance network falls under an identical regulatory treatment.

Oman: verified digital access without importing another country's terms

Oman has confirmed electronic access through Blue and YOUGotaGift. It also demonstrates the danger of treating a regional retailer's physical and electronic footprints as interchangeable. Alshaya's common terms list Oman for physical cards but omit it from the explicit eGift country list. This review therefore does not count Alshaya as a verified Omani electronic programme. That exclusion concerns the inspected evidence, not a claim that no digital Alshaya product could exist. [S23]

Samsung's same January 2025 campaign specified an OMR20 YouGotAGift reward, providing a dated example of gift value used as a product-purchase incentive. Campaign denominations should never be mistaken for programme-wide minimums, maximums or typical consumer spending. [S25]

Oman's Central Bank states that Banking Law 2/2025 provides authority to license and supervise payment service providers. Its BM1192 policy distinguishes PSP functions from ancillary services; section 17.6 states that payment aggregators and gateways cannot provide an e-wallet issuing service through their platforms. This is relevant when a gift distributor proposes holding customer balances. No general Omani gift-card expiry or denomination rule was established by the inspected sources. [S28]; [S29]

Editorial analysis: Oman has documented digital availability and a separately attributed IMARC estimate. Its publisher definitions have not been reconciled with the other country reports.

Product parameters that can be compared directly

Blue's official common terms provide an unusually clear country matrix. The programme delivers through email or the Blue Rewards app, lasts twelve months, permits partial spending and prohibits reloading, cash exchange and cross-border redemption. These are the programme's contractual terms, subject to applicable mandatory law; they do not determine its regulatory classification in each country. [S30]

T14. Product parameters that can be compared directly

The currencies are not comparable amounts of purchasing power. The table records contractual denomination ranges without converting them into a demand index.

T15. Programme roles and electronic country coverage

This is a deliberately non-exhaustive evidence register. Counting rows measures research coverage, not competitive concentration. A map should label a country “verified digital programme present” rather than rank it by the number of providers encountered.

Iran, Iraq and the Levant: eight distinct gift-card markets

The commercial evidence across these eight jurisdictions supports several different business models: domestic merchant gifting, bank-distributed local vouchers, international entertainment codes sold through local applications, and programmes documented only historically or at announcement stage. Those models should not share one unqualified “virtual gift card” label. A merchant voucher creates an obligation to supply goods or services; a payment instrument can create a regulated monetary claim; an imported gaming code depends on the foreign issuer's account and redemption rules.

This section records evidence available on 18 September 2026. A provider listing verifies what the provider offers publicly, not a successful purchase, national service continuity or regulatory approval. Country values below remain attributed commercial estimates. Missing data means that a suitable public gift-specific figure was not verified, not that gifting is absent.

T16. Market values and the limits of comparison

Sources: Iran total-market report [S31], Israel publisher summary [S04], Iraq report scope [S32].

These figures must not be added into a regional total. The country series does not reconcile with the separately published Middle East aggregate used elsewhere in this study. The public pages do not resolve the geographic or measurement inconsistency. Nor should a broader prepaid-card or wallet total fill a missing gift-card cell.

Iran has an additional, narrower series: Mordor Intelligence estimated its digital gift-card market at USD 300.17 million in 2025 and forecast USD 471.89 million for 2030. The page was last updated on 16 May 2025; an explicit 2026 value is not public. This is a separate publisher, definition and vintage. Dividing it by PayNXT360's total to calculate digital penetration would create a statistic neither publisher supplied. [S33].

Iran: domestic merchant gifting is documented, but current terms need stronger access

Digikala's company-authored report for Iranian year 1402 records the introduction of electronic gift cards and more than 1,000 organisations buying its gift cards. It also identifies Nowruz, Women's Day and Men's Day as prominent occasions. This is useful evidence of an established corporate and seasonal gifting use case. It measures one company during a historical reporting period, not all Iranian gift-card demand. The accessible copy is hosted by Ecomotive; the original issuer site and current full terms could not be retrieved during this review. [S34].

For a supplier assessment, that distinction changes the next questions. A buyer needs current redemption eligibility, expiry, treatment of unused balances, recipient account requirements and merchant restrictions. Historical corporate participation does not answer them. A distributor's ability to arrange a voucher from abroad also does not establish issuer approval or a permitted international settlement route.

Bank-issued rial gift cards should be assessed separately from merchant credits. Secondary reporting points to revisions of Iranian issuance limits, but a current original central-bank text was not obtained. This study therefore does not publish a supposedly definitive 2026 local cap. Cross-border distribution also requires transaction-specific sanctions analysis: OFAC's Iran programme was still receiving updates in September 2026. The relevant question is the participating persons, services, payment chain and applicable authorisations, rather than whether the product is called a gift. [S35].

Iraq: digital-code distribution and domestic payment gift cards have different rules

ZainCash provides clear evidence of a local distribution channel. Its digital-card FAQ lists entertainment and platform products including iTunes, Shahid VIP, Supercell, PUBG and Careem, with purchase confirmation through the wallet PIN. That establishes a practical route to acquire digital products. It does not establish that these codes are Iraqi dinar merchant vouchers, nor that the entire wallet's transaction volume represents gift spending. [S36].

The Central Bank of Iraq's gift-card circular is unusually specific. Dated 5 May 2024, it addresses banks and electronic-payment issuers and requires approval before launching the product. Its domestic prepaid gift-card category has a maximum denomination of IQD 150,000, use within Iraq in Iraqi dinars, no cash withdrawal and no reload. Recipient registration and OTP activation accompany a monthly activated-value limit of IQD 1 million per telephone number. Expiry must be stated; the circular does not specify a universal minimum validity period. [S37].

The commercial implication is a designed domestic payment product with controlled issuance and activation. A programme cannot simply import overseas card terms and describe them as the Iraqi regulatory standard. At the same time, the circular's scope should not be automatically asserted over every foreign entertainment code sold locally.

Source freshness matters. Trade Bank of Iraq still exposes an undated page describing USD 100, USD 300 and USD 500 branch-distributed gift cards with two-year validity. That does not reconcile with the newer domestic IQD-only framework without further issuer explanation. It is retained as an unresolved legacy listing, not counted as verified current virtual issuance. [S38].

Israel: substantial digital programme evidence, with evolving consumer protections

BUYME provides stronger evidence of a domestic multi-merchant digital gifting proposition. Its terms describe vouchers delivered through text messages or email and redeemed by code at participating businesses in Israel. Monetary vouchers permit repeated purchases against the balance, while a voucher for a specified product or experience follows different redemption rules. Those distinctions are commercially important for employee rewards: “choice of merchants” and “choice of how much to spend now” are separate benefits. [S39].

The Israeli consumer authority's older guidance distinguishes legal voucher categories and explains the five-year minimum for qualifying shopping vouchers. It is a baseline, not a complete September 2026 compliance summary. Knesset records show that consumer protections were already changing by January 2026 and that additional amendments were approved in committee in March. A committee record alone does not establish the commencement date of every final provision. [S40], [S41], [S42].

Current issuer terms are consequently essential. BUYME describes minimum 60-month monetary-voucher validity and extension arrangements for specified vouchers issued from 14 April 2022, with different extensions depending on remaining value. Procurement should obtain the exact current schedule, including the treatment of boundary amounts, reminders and residual balances. The company's statement that it benefits from a payment-services licensing exemption is its own legal disclosure, not evidence that all Israeli gift programmes share that exemption.

The market estimate is useful for identifying a commercially researched country, but the unresolved regional discrepancy makes it unsuitable for a precise share-of-MENA claim.

Jordan: a local merchant gift and an imported code are separate bank products

Arab Bank's Arabi eGift is a directly evidenced local digital-gifting service. The sender selects an occasion, funds the gift from an account, credit card or points, and shares a link. The recipient uses a mobile OTP to access the greeting, value and QR code, then redeems at participating merchants offering Arab Bank point-of-sale payment. That supports a local merchant-gift classification. It does not mean every merchant accepting a bank card participates. [S43].

The bank separately distributes third-party eVouchers for gaming, entertainment and ecommerce. Its product page explicitly tells customers to choose the correct region. The linked service terms identify an external vendor's role. These are distinct from the local QR gift proposition, so a catalogue audit should record product, vendor and redemption territory separately. [S44], [S45].

Jordan's electronic-payment and money-transfer framework matters when a business holds or moves customer funds. Its licensing regime should not be presented as a single statutory expiry rule for every merchant voucher. The public eGift page did not establish a complete expiry, refund and residual-balance schedule. [S46].

A useful exclusion strengthens the analysis: AJIB's virtual prepaid-card terms explicitly state that its product is neither a gift card nor a gift certificate. Counting every virtual payment card would therefore inflate the apparent gift-card ecosystem. [S47].

Lebanon: useful merchant terms and a material 2026 regulatory change

Feel22 illustrates why catalogue breadth alone is insufficient. Its Lebanese gift-card page lists denominations from USD 25 to USD 150, a one-year validity period and use in a single order, without splitting value across purchases. Redemption uses a checkout code. The page also mentions delivery in Lebanon, so it supports digital redemption but does not conclusively establish email-only gift delivery. [S48].

Whish Money supplies a clearer digital-delivery example: its FAQ offers digital gift cards and gaming vouchers with immediate code delivery through the app. This is evidence of a distributor channel, not a national gift-card market size or proof that each foreign brand can be redeemed under identical conditions. [S49].

The regulatory account must reflect January 2026. Banque du Liban's Decision 13790 establishes an electronic-payment-services-provider regime with prior approval for specified services, including e-money. Its companion revision of Decision 7548 replaces previous provisions for banks and financial institutions. Current requirements include relevant authorisations, customer protection and data obligations. A retailer's own goods voucher should not be automatically called an e-wallet, but a platform storing monetary balances cannot rely on the marketing label “gift” to settle its classification. [S50], [S51].

Commercial evaluation should distinguish face-value currency, payment currency, refunds and settlement. A USD-labelled merchant voucher and a USD wallet balance are not interchangeable obligations.

Palestine: identifiable code distribution, limited national measurement

Jawwal's public digital-goods catalogue demonstrates a local channel for entertainment codes. Its iTunes page lists dollar-denominated cards priced in shekels, asks for a local mobile number for verification and advertises immediate delivery. These are concrete product observations. They do not establish a domestic multi-retailer gift network, nationwide operating continuity or unrestricted international redemption. [S52].

Issuer rules remain decisive. Apple states that its relevant gift cards cannot be redeemed outside the country or region of purchase. Accordingly, a distributor's broad “global” label is insufficient evidence of eligibility for a recipient's actual account. This is a product-selection and disclosure issue, not evidence that local digital-code demand is absent. [S53].

Palestinian Decree-Law 41 of 2022 provides the national payments framework, including the Palestinian Monetary Authority's licensing role for payment and financial-technology services. That law does not by itself answer every merchant-voucher classification or expiry question. The map uses ISO code PS, records the verified distribution channel, and leaves gift-specific value fields empty. [S54].

Syria: distinguish an advertised code seller from an announced local programme

SGC GAME publicly lists digital entertainment and retail codes with explicit regional variants. Its website references Syrian payment methods and advertises returning balance when an order is not completed. This supports a provider-advertised distribution footprint. It does not verify the seller's issuer authorisation, regulatory status, code supply chain or actual transaction completion. [S55], [S56].

Sky CashBack describes vouchers that can be purchased, spent and gifted at participating merchants, but the reviewed page still says “coming soon” and announces a Damascus launch in 2026. It belongs in an announced-programme layer, not the active-provider count. Treating a future launch as current coverage would materially overstate the local merchant opportunity. [S57].

The sanctions description also needs updating. OFAC's current FAQ states that the comprehensive Syria programme ended on 1 July 2025, while targeted restrictions remain. Its August 2026 update records further changes. A blanket statement that US sanctions prohibit all Syrian gifting is therefore inaccurate; transaction screening and any applicable export controls still require separate analysis. [S58].

Historical reporting identifies Syrian prepaid-card rules, but this review did not obtain a current original central-bank text establishing their present application. No old nominal cap is carried forward as a verified 2026 limit.

Yemen: public catalogue evidence needs operational and geographic qualification

The Yemen Gift Cards developer listing describes an application for entertainment subscriptions, gaming and payment cards, advertising immediate delivery and local payment relationships. Its last displayed update is July 2024. This is a useful lead and evidence of a published proposition, but it falls below current issuer terms or an independently verified operating programme. No complete public expiry or refund schedule was retrieved. [S59].

The Central Bank of Yemen's Aden-hosted instructions address regulated electronic money, including backing and expiry. Their application to a particular gift product requires a separate classification assessment. Those provisions should not be copied into every retail gift-card contract. Territorial implementation, issuer authority and subsequent amendments need local confirmation before a programme relies on them. [S60].

US restrictions relating to Ansarallah require attention to specific persons and activities. They are not a substitute for distinguishing the country, its residents and individual counterparties. Humanitarian authorisations should not be assumed to authorise an unrelated commercial gift-card transaction. [S61].

T17. What programme buyers can actually compare

T18. Regulatory distinctions in the Levant and neighbouring markets

These comparisons support concrete procurement work: establish the issuer of the redemption obligation, separate digital delivery from online redemption, identify the actual acceptance territory, and obtain current balance and refund terms. None of those questions can be answered by substituting ecommerce turnover, wallet adoption or a mobile-payments growth rate for measured gift-card demand.

North Africa and the regional edges: eight different gift-card markets

Research cutoff: 18 September 2026. Coverage: Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Djibouti, Mauritania and Sudan.

The available evidence supports a differentiated view of this part of MENA. Egypt has both a published country-level gift-card forecast and clearly documented electronic-voucher programmes. Morocco and Tunisia have identifiable local programmes with useful redemption evidence, although comparable public market values remain unavailable. For several other countries, the evidence concerns distribution of international codes, forthcoming products or general payment regulation. Treating all these observations as equivalent “gift-card availability” would overstate what has been established.

Two distinctions matter throughout. First, a digital code can be sold to someone in a country without being issued there or accepted by its domestic retailers. Second, a physical card may support online or mobile redemption, while an electronically delivered voucher may require a store visit. These distinctions should shape procurement, product design and the accompanying map.

Comparable country estimates

Only Egypt has a directly retrievable public series within the preferred PayNXT360 Q1 2026 gift-card research vintage. Its numbers cover the overall gift-card market, including physical and digital formats. The public description does not disclose a digital-only value. The Africa package names individual studies for Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa; a country selector on a sales form is not evidence that every African country has a corresponding study. [S62], [S63].

T19. Comparable country estimates

These are commercial estimates and forecasts, not official national accounts. Missing cells mean unavailable evidence, not zero activity. Morocco's wider prepaid-card and wallet report lists a gift-card transaction-value figure, but its public contents do not expose those values. Substituting the headline prepaid/wallet total would substantially change the market being measured. The eight-country table therefore has no meaningful complete regional sum. [S64].

Egypt: the clearest documented electronic-voucher proposition

Egypt supplies the strongest combination of a public market estimate and product-level digital evidence in this group. The PayNXT360 forecast should nevertheless be read as one publisher's model, rather than proof of a measured virtual-gift-card share or of any provider's dominance.

noon's official terms make the local proposition unusually concrete: electronic vouchers are offered in Egyptian pounds, and Egyptian balances are for noon.com Egypt. The product differs from the broader affiliate acceptance described in the same document for Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Its code must be redeemed into account credit within one year. The Egyptian help page then distinguishes that single code redemption from spending the credited balance across purchases and returning eligible merchandise to the credit balance. [S65], [S66].

This creates a practical corporate-rewards option, but also an operational obligation: a recipient who receives a valid code has not necessarily activated its spending value. Programme reporting should separate purchase, delivery, account redemption and final spending. Expiry reminders should target the relevant stage, and customer support should distinguish an unused code from a merchandise refund.

There is additional local redemption evidence for B-Tech eGift cards in eGifter Rewards' corporate catalogue. Amazon.eg appears through Bidali with an identified Egyptian issuing company, Souq.com for E-Commerce LLC, although direct retrieval of Amazon's terms failed during this review. These are different evidence strengths and should remain labelled accordingly. [S67], [S68].

Regulation requires a separate classification exercise. The Central Bank of Egypt's June 2025 announcement covers licensing of payment-system operators and payment-service providers, including relevant foreign providers serving Egypt. September 2025 rules add governance and internal-control requirements. These sources do not establish that every retailer voucher falls into the same licensing category. [S69], [S70].

Morocco: local merchant value with online redemption

Decathlon Morocco provides direct evidence of a local merchant gift-card programme. Its terms allow repeated partial spending and describe collection from stores. Separately, the retailer's payment instructions explain how a customer enters a gift-card code on Decathlon.ma and supplements an insufficient balance with another payment method. Online redemption is therefore supported by primary evidence; a currently purchasable, independently delivered virtual-card product was not established. [S71], [S72].

That distinction has commercial consequences. An employer wanting to reward remote recipients needs to know whether cards can be created and delivered in bulk, whether the recipient must collect a physical instrument, and whether support can recover the value when a code is misdirected. A consumer-facing card page does not answer those corporate procurement questions. The reviewed Decathlon terms describe sales to individuals, so their existence alone should not be presented as a verified enterprise-distribution agreement.

The legal perimeter also depends on product architecture. Article 6 of Morocco's Banking Law 103-12 defines electronic money using criteria including storage, funds received and acceptance by parties other than the issuer. A single merchant's obligation and a multi-merchant payment balance therefore raise different classification questions. The central-bank-hosted consolidation is dated March 2022, and is identified as such here. [S73].

No gift-card-specific Moroccan market value or national digital share is supplied. The programme evidence supports an availability observation, not a market-size estimate.

Tunisia: employee benefits with a mobile-use layer

Pluxee Tunisia documents two related but distinct products. Its gift-cheque page reports one-year cheque validity and more than 4,000 acceptance points. Its separate Carte Cadeau network page points cardholders to digital balance and merchant-location tools. The cheque network total must not be relabelled as the number of shops accepting the card or the mobile application. [S74], [S75].

The developer's Pluxee Pay TN listing describes phone-based payment for holders of Tunisian meal, gift and clothing cards with a valid Tunisian mobile number. This is meaningful local digital-use evidence. It does not demonstrate that every underlying card is issued virtually, nor does it establish a common expiry rule across all benefit products. [S76].

For employers, this suggests a purchasing process that starts with the exact benefit type and merchant network, then assesses the digital experience. A large acceptance claim is of limited value if the recipient's intended shop accepts a different Pluxee instrument. The practical integration work concerns employee eligibility, loading, account access, balance visibility and the resolution of failed transactions.

The relevant payment framework includes BCT Circular 2018-16. Article 2 describes the permitted activities of payment institutions and confines their payment services to Tunisian dinars inside Tunisia; the text separately addresses inward transfers and foreign-exchange authorization. These provisions should not be turned into a blanket statement about every international purchase or a claim that all gift vouchers are regulated identically. [S77].

Provider marketing also discusses employer tax treatment, but this review does not reproduce those claims as legal conclusions without the corresponding official tax provisions.

Algeria: distinguish future launches from existing gift value

Algeria illustrates why a programme map needs an “announced or incomplete evidence” category. Kiabi Algeria's service page explicitly labels its gift card as forthcoming. It lists proposed dinar denominations and in-store use, but supplies no confirmed launch date. Counting the page as an active virtual programme would remove the most consequential condition from the source. [S78].

Zara Algeria offers a different observation. Its local payment help includes a gift-card payment option and explains the use of a store-credit card or credit receipt issued after a return. That confirms a merchant credit mechanism in the local customer journey. It does not, by itself, establish that a customer can buy and digitally deliver new gift value in Algeria. French Zara gift-card terms cannot resolve that local gap. [S79].

An Algerian market-entry assessment should therefore begin with evidence of issuance and redemption, rather than with an international retailer's brand presence. The distinction between purchasing new prepaid value and spending a return credit matters to demand measurement, customer acquisition and the party's obligations to the holder.

Bank of Algeria Regulation 25-02, dated April 2025, establishes a PSP authorization framework. The regulator's index verifies its existence, while the complete PDF could not be retrieved here; no unseen load limit or exemption is quoted. Separately, ecommerce Law 18-05 requires an electronic offer and contract with supplier, price, availability and delivery information. These are useful requirements for presenting voucher terms clearly, but do not prove a special national gift-card expiry entitlement. [S80], [S81].

Libya: local distribution does not establish local issuance

New local merchant evidence establishes electronic gift delivery in Libya: BeautyExpress [S101] offers an emailed LYD1,000 gift card. The programme map now records local digital availability alongside code distribution. The additional-data tables also distinguish Nuran Bank’s separate gift products.

Paymaster's RunPay service page provides a Libya-facing distribution signal: a Tripoli contact and a catalogue that includes Amazon gift cards and US-labelled Apple and Google products. It supports the existence of a local commercial channel for external digital value. It does not establish a Libyan issuer for those products, an unrestricted right to redeem them locally, or a domestic retail-gift-card market value. [S82].

The distinction should remain visible to procurement teams. A recipient's physical location, the account's store country, the voucher's currency and the issuing brand's redemption rules can be four different attributes. Supplying a code without checking those attributes can produce a technically delivered but unusable reward. The evidence reviewed does not justify promising compatibility across all Libyan recipients.

The Central Bank of Libya publishes electronic-payment rules and a register that distinguishes wallets and card-processing activities. Some displayed licence-extension dates precede the research cutoff. A historic listing or a seller's own licence number must therefore be checked before being described as current authorization. [S83].

A further product-design issue appears in CBL Circular 18/2025, which references a warning against handing an individual's prepaid payment card to another person. This is a reason to distinguish a transferable gift voucher from a personal prepaid bank card. It is not a finding that every merchant voucher in Libya is non-transferable. [S84].

Djibouti: international catalogues, with a local regulatory framework

No directly verified domestic merchant gift-card programme or comparable public market estimate was established for Djibouti in this review. Hablax has a Djibouti-labelled Yalla Ludo page with USD-denominated gaming products, but the country label is distribution evidence, not proof of local issuance or a domestic retailer network. [S85].

This is an evidence gap rather than a conclusion that gifting or vouchers do not exist. The next decisive evidence would be a named local issuer or merchant, a published contract, and an identifiable issuance and acceptance process. General financial-inclusion statistics would not fill that gap.

Djibouti's central bank lists Instruction 2017-01 for electronic-money issuers. Its customer-protection provisions address contracts, limits, refund procedures, charges and the issuer's responsibility for distributors. These provisions matter if a proposed reward product is legally electronic money. They do not establish a universal gift-card expiry period. The instruction's upload path contains 2024, but the rule itself is identified as 2017. [S86], [S87].

Mauritania: a local-facing reseller signal with unresolved stock

RimCarte presents a Mauritania-focused digital-code business, advertises SMS or WhatsApp delivery, and names Bankily, Masrvi and Sedad as funding methods. The visible catalogue nevertheless showed zero available products. This supports a local-facing distribution proposition but is insufficient to confirm an active inventory, domestic issuance or a reliable enterprise-rewards service. [S88].

For a buyer, the unresolved question is operational: what can actually be ordered, in which denomination, under whose contract, and with what remedy when delivery or redemption fails? A homepage's payment logos answer none of those questions. They should not be converted into a verified national issuer footprint.

Mauritania's Law 2021-014 covers electronic-payment services and e-money activities. The central bank's legal index also identifies implementing instructions for payment and e-money institutions and agents. Those distinctions matter when determining whether a business is an issuer, an agent or a merchant selling external codes. Accepting payment from a local wallet does not prove issuer authorization. [S89], [S90].

Sudan: neither international availability nor non-availability is universal

No domestic retail programme was verified for Sudan. A Sudan-labelled Bitrefill retail page displayed no local retail result in the reviewed output, while international digital products appeared elsewhere on the site. That observation does not justify a zero market estimate or a claim that all international digital value is inaccessible. [S91].

Conversely, “international” is not a guarantee of acceptance. Gift Card Granny's September 2026 support terms list Sudan as excluded for one specific corporate reward-card product. This is product evidence, not a description of every card network or a statement of Sudanese law. A programme buyer must verify the actual issuer's country restrictions before allocating a reward. [S92].

Sudan also has an identifiable payment-regulation framework. The central bank's March 2026 USSD circular addresses banks, financial institutions and electronic-payment providers, while its index lists e-purse and mobile-payment rules. These sources establish oversight of relevant payment activities. They do not measure demand for gift cards or establish that an ordinary wallet is a gift-card programme. [S93], [S94].

T20. Product conditions and map interpretation

The table condenses the linked product sources above; it is not an issuer ranking or a guarantee of transaction success.

The strongest commercial comparison is consequently about execution and fit: available reward choices, recipient access, local currency, meaningful acceptance, delivery certainty and recovery of failed value. A low headline discount is not sufficient if a reward is incompatible with the recipient's account or requires an unexpected store visit. No universal margin, breakage rate or digital penetration percentage can be inferred from this evidence.

The interactive maps retain separate fields for market-data availability and programme evidence. They distinguish virtual issuance from balances that can be viewed or spent on a phone, and separate distributor pages from incomplete or announced programmes.

Finally, geographic presentation must not imply sovereignty. Western Sahara is separately listed by the United Nations as a Non-Self-Governing Territory and must not be silently absorbed into Morocco's map geometry or observations. Sudan means SD, excluding South Sudan, SS. Including Djibouti, Mauritania and Sudan in this commercial study is an editorial coverage choice, not a claim that all definitions of MENA use the same boundaries. [S95].

Turning the country evidence into a regional programme

A regional gift-card strategy begins with the obligation behind each product. The brand displayed on the gift, the distributor selling it and the organisation holding unredeemed value may be different parties. Those roles affect reconciliation, failed delivery, expiry, refunds and the response when a merchant leaves a catalogue. The country profiles show why a regional purchasing interface does not remove those local questions.

T21. Commercial decisions supported by the evidence

These are analytical implications of the product differences documented in this study, rather than a claim that every named operator provides each feature. A useful supplier comparison should preserve missing fields instead of awarding points for marketing language. For example, an unspecified expiry is a question to resolve, not an invitation to assume a familiar twelve-month period.

The regional opportunity also has more than one customer. Consumer gifting centres on occasion, presentation and recipient choice. Employee rewards centre on local usefulness, reliable issuance and reconciliation. Merchant promotions centre on incremental shopping and repeat visits. All may use a virtual card, but they should not automatically share one measurement framework or contract.

For expansion, the verified programme map supplies a starting catalogue of documented routes to market. It does not prescribe an investment ranking. A country with several visible offerings may still have limited public demand data; a country with sparse web documentation may have activity that this desk research cannot measure. Commercial decisions should combine the published evidence with direct issuer diligence and recipient research in the intended market.

Methodology, limitations and update priorities

The study combines authenticated Statista tables, original consumer research, attributed commercial market-report summaries, official product terms and primary legal material. Search results were treated as discovery aids; substantive claims were tied to the underlying source wherever available. Public report summaries are evidence of what a research publisher estimates, rather than independent confirmation of the national market.

The data snapshot is 18 September 2026. Each market retains its own observation year, source vintage and measurement unit. Dollar figures retain the publishers’ reported USD units; inflation and exchange-rate assumptions have not been reconciled. Local product denominations retain their original currencies. A conversion from billions to millions is a display change, not additional precision. Forecasts remain forecasts. The study does not interpolate missing years or use a later access date to update an older survey.

Map 1 contains six countries with attributed 2025 total-market estimates and sixteen without an absolute value verified. Oman uses a separate IMARC publisher series; this does not make the six estimates methodologically comparable. Its value bands are explicit: below USD1 billion, USD1 billion to below USD3 billion, USD3 billion or more, and no comparable estimate. The large Israeli estimate and the Saudi source-version conflict are disclosed in the relevant panels and profiles. There is no combined regional total, country-share calculation or claim that those estimates have been reconciled.

Map 2 distinguishes documented local digital delivery or redemption, historical local programmes, imported-code distribution, incomplete or announced programmes, and unverified availability. A source may establish one narrow route without proving a complete national ecosystem. Listings and terms can change; no purchase was made to confirm fulfilment. Absence from this register is not a negative finding about a provider or country.

Legal material is described at the level supported by the source. Draft consultations are identified as drafts. A general payments law is not presented as a dedicated gift-card statute, and a merchant's contractual expiry is not presented as a national legal minimum. Product classification depends on the actual acceptance network, value flow and parties. This study does not infer licence status from a gift-card listing or a marketplace's presence in a country.

T22. Questions that remain open

The evidence supports a country-specific view of digital gifting: common distribution technology, distinct local obligations and uneven public measurement. The most useful next dataset would connect issued and redeemed value with digital format, issuer role and recipient country on consistent definitions. Until that exists, a transparent atlas with visible gaps is a more defensible foundation for decisions than a single unqualified regional growth number.