Jaywan, the UAE’s first national domestic card payment scheme, officially went live on 20 July 2026 when Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Vice President, Deputy Prime Minister and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Central Bank of the UAE, inaugurated nationwide issuance through licensed banks, financial institutions and exchange houses. The name Jaywan, meaning circling or roaming in Arabic, reflects what the scheme is designed to do: move seamlessly through the UAE’s financial system while keeping domestic transactions, and the data behind them, within the country. For every resident who has ever tapped a Visa or Mastercard in a Dubai mall and wondered where that transaction data went, Jaywan is the answer the UAE has been building for years.
Developed and operated by Al Etihad Payments, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Central Bank of the UAE, Jaywan routes domestic card transactions through UAESWITCH, the country’s own payment infrastructure, rather than through the global networks that have historically handled UAE processing. International transactions still work through co-badged partners, with Jaywan cards carrying a secondary network such as Discover, Mastercard, Visa or UnionPay for overseas use. The practical result is a card that works everywhere a resident needs it to work, while keeping the data and the economics of domestic transactions within the UAE. Four banks were live at launch: Emirates NBD and Bank of Baroda came online during the pilot phase in 2025, with First Abu Dhabi Bank launching a Jaywan debit card and Commercial Bank of Dubai introducing Jaywan prepaid cards at the official inauguration.
“Jaywan represents a defining step in the UAE’s journey towards a more sovereign, resilient and future-ready payments ecosystem. Through this launch, we are contributing to a homegrown payments infrastructure built around the UAE’s priorities, while giving our customers a secure and seamless way to participate in the country’s digital future.”
— Dr. Adnan Chilwan, Group CEO, Dubai Islamic Bank (TechAfrica News, July 2026)
Why Payment Sovereignty Matters More Than It Sounds
The launch of Jaywan is not primarily a story about card design or banking features. It is a story about infrastructure sovereignty, and that matters enormously in a world where payment data is one of the most commercially and strategically valuable categories of information a government or economy can control. Every domestic transaction processed through a foreign network is a data point that leaves the country: who bought what, where, when, for how much, through which merchant, linked to which account. At scale, across millions of residents and billions of dirhams in monthly transactions, that is an extraordinarily detailed economic and behavioural dataset. Jaywan keeps it in the UAE, processed under UAE law, governed by the Central Bank of the UAE, with the regulatory oversight and data protection frameworks that Emirati authorities can directly enforce.
The commercial case is equally strong. By creating a domestic processing network, the UAE eliminates the fees that international networks charge for routing domestic transactions, fees that are paid by merchants and ultimately absorbed into the cost of goods and services across the economy. Over time, Jaywan is expected to enable lower transaction costs for merchants and potentially lower banking fees for consumers, as the competition introduced by a homegrown alternative reduces the pricing power of the incumbent international networks. For small businesses in the UAE in particular, where card acceptance fees are a meaningful operating cost, that long-term pricing effect could be genuinely significant.
What Comes Next for Jaywan
The July 2026 launch is the beginning of the Jaywan rollout, not the completion of it. The Central Bank of the UAE has mandated that all licensed banks in the country become Jaywan-enabled, meaning the full breadth of the UAE banking system will be integrated into the domestic network in the coming months. Al Etihad Payments and Mastercard have also announced the world’s first Jaywan-Mastercard co-badged credit card, combining the domestic routing benefits of Jaywan with Mastercard’s international acceptance network in a single product. Network International has enabled online payment acceptance for Jaywan cards at thousands of UAE merchants, extending the scheme into e-commerce from day one.
The long-term ambition, consistent with the UAE’s broader digital economy strategy, is for Jaywan to become the default payment infrastructure for UAE residents in the way that national schemes like India’s RuPay or Singapore’s NETS have become default for their populations. That transition takes time and requires consistent execution across the banking system, the merchant network and the consumer experience. But the foundation is now in place, and the pace of bank onboarding since the official launch suggests that the financial sector has understood both the regulatory imperative and the commercial logic of full participation in the UAE’s homegrown payment future.
“This achievement reflects the UAE’s commitment to developing a more efficient, resilient and competitive financial sector that unlocks broader opportunities for innovation, promotes financial inclusion, and further strengthens the UAE’s position as a leading global financial hub.”
— Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Vice President and Deputy Prime Minister of the UAE (Gulf News, July 2026)
