Jaywan E-commerce Acceptance: What UAE Merchants and PSPs Need to Prepare

Yes, you can already accept Jaywan online in the UAE, but only through gateways that have switched it on. Card issuance went nationwide on 20 July 2026, and Network International, Telr and noon payments have announced Jaywan e-commerce acceptance. For merchants, a Jaywan integration is mostly a conversation with your acquirer. For PSPs, it means routing, BIN handling, tokenization and reconciliation work.

This post covers what has actually been announced, what hasn’t been published yet, and a readiness checklist for both merchants and PSPs. Where the technical detail is not public, we say so and tell you what to ask.

What is Jaywan and who runs it?

Jaywan is the UAE’s first national domestic card scheme. It is operated by Al Etihad Payments (AEP), a subsidiary of the Central Bank of the UAE. The scheme was introduced in 2024, and on 20 July 2026 Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed inaugurated nationwide card issuance by banks, licensed financial institutions and exchange houses.

AEP’s announcement says Jaywan cards are accepted at point-of-sale terminals, e-commerce platforms, ATMs and digital wallets, for domestic and international transactions subject to the applicable rules. Issuance is staged, with banks rolling cards out over the following months.

On 23 July, WAM reported that 11 financial institutions had completed preparations to issue Jaywan cards:

On launch day, FAB introduced a Jaywan debit card and CBD introduced prepaid Jaywan cards. WAM also said credit cards would follow, and that wallet payments (Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay) would come in a later phase. AEP has since published an Apple Pay page for Jaywan, so wallet availability depends on your customer’s issuer.

Which acquirers and PSPs accept Jaywan online?

Here is what has been announced publicly as of early October 2026:

Merchant-side adoption is growing too. Etihad Airways became the first airline to accept Jaywan on etihad.com, and Majid Al Futtaim accepts it across more than 200 UAE destinations. In the noon payments announcement, AEP’s Chief Products Officer said plainly: “Jaywan acceptance for e-commerce transactions is live.”

If your PSP is not in that table, it doesn’t mean they can’t process Jaywan. It means we couldn’t find a public announcement. Ask them.

Is there an official deadline for e-commerce acceptance?

We have not found one. AEP and the Central Bank describe acceptance across channels, but we could not find a published date by which every UAE acquirer or online merchant must accept Jaywan. Earlier reporting described a phased rollout, with acquiring first and issuance later, and that is roughly how it played out.

So treat this as a market-driven timeline for now. The practical pressure comes from your customers. As more banks move debit customers onto Jaywan cards, a checkout that declines or doesn’t recognise them will lose sales. If a mandate or deadline is published, we’ll update this post.

How do co-badged Jaywan cards affect your checkout?

Co-badging is the part most teams underestimate. On 21 July 2026, AEP and Mastercard announced the first Jaywan-Mastercard co-badged credit card, and Mastercard’s infrastructure is set to support co-badged debit, prepaid and credit cards. Gulf News also reports that UAE institutions can issue co-badged Jaywan-UnionPay cards, with domestic transactions running on Jaywan and international ones on UnionPay.

For an online merchant, that raises three questions:

1. Brand detection. Does your hosted checkout or card form recognise a Jaywan card and show the right brand? A card form that only knows Visa and Mastercard may reject a mono-badged Jaywan card.
2. Routing. On a co-badged card, which network does your acquirer route a domestic online transaction to? That affects cost, authorization rates and dispute rules.
3. Reporting. Does your settlement report break out Jaywan as its own scheme so finance can reconcile it?

Don’t hard-code card number ranges yourself. Ask your acquirer how they identify Jaywan and co-badged cards and whether their hosted fields already handle it.

What about tokenization, 3DS and PCI scope?

This is where public information runs out. The announcements we reviewed do not publish a Jaywan e-commerce technical specification, so we won’t invent one. Here’s what we can say:

• Wallet tokens. AEP’s Apple Pay page says the actual Jaywan card number is not shared with merchants or stored on Apple servers. That is consistent with wallet tokenization, but it covers Apple Pay only.
• Gateway tokenization. Mastercard lists tokenization and authentication among Merchant Cloud modules, but the noon payments announcement does not say these apply to Jaywan transactions specifically.
• 3D Secure. We found no public statement on how Jaywan cardholders are authenticated for online payments.

For PCI DSS, the logic doesn’t change because the scheme is new. If your checkout uses hosted fields or a redirect and your systems only ever see PSP tokens, a Jaywan card adds no new card data to your environment. If you store card numbers for subscriptions or one-click checkout, Jaywan cards sit in scope like any other PAN. Our sister practice covers this in detail in payment tokenization and PCI DSS scope in the UAE.

What should merchants check before accepting Jaywan online?

Most of this is an acquirer conversation plus a round of testing:

What should PSPs and payment facilitators prepare?

If you sit between merchants and an acquirer, the work is heavier:

The pattern we’d expect: a PSP that relies on an acquirer or gateway that already supports Jaywan can move quickly, and the real work is in BIN tables, fraud rules, reporting and merchant communications. A PSP that wants its own scheme connection has a much longer project, and the specifications come from AEP, not from blog posts.

Is Jaywan the same as Aani?

No, and it’s worth being clear about this because both come from Al Etihad Payments. Jaywan is a card scheme. Aani is AEP’s instant payments platform for account-to-account transfers. A customer paying with Aani isn’t using a card at all, so the integration, the authentication and the dispute model are all different.

Some merchants will want both: Jaywan for customers who prefer cards, and Aani-based payments where account-to-account makes sense. Plan them as two separate projects.

Where do you go from here?

If you’re a merchant on Network International, Telr or noon payments, start by asking your account manager whether Jaywan is live on your account and how it’s priced. Then run a test transaction. If you’re a PSP, the hard parts are routing, tokenization and fraud rules, and those depend on details you’ll need from your acquirer or AEP.

We run a fixed-scope Jaywan and tokenization integration readiness engagement. We review your checkout, token vault, routing and PCI scope, draft the questions for your acquirer, and hand back a prioritised go-live plan. If that would help, get in touch and tell us where you are in the rollout.