Dubai Duty Free launched Crypto.com Pay across Dubai International, Al Maktoum International and its online store, becoming the first airport retailer in the Middle East to accept a regulated digital payment option, days after Emirates activated the same service on July 28, 2026.
Key Takeaways
- Dubai Duty Free launched Crypto.com Pay at Dubai International, Al Maktoum International and online, the first Middle East airport retailer to do so.
- The service works only for eligible UAE residents, with every purchase settled to the retailer in UAE dirhams.
- Crypto.com holds the UAE’s first Stored Value Facilities licence from the Central Bank, secured through its Foris DAX Middle East unit in May 2026.
- Dubai Duty Free posted record 2025 sales of Dhs8.680 billion (US$2.378 billion), up 9.85% year over year.
- Emirates activated the same Crypto.com Pay option on July 28, 2026, under a near-identical UAE-resident-only, AED-settled structure.
What Happened?
Dubai Duty Free confirmed that Crypto.com Pay is now live at checkout across its network, converting a Memorandum of Understanding the two companies signed in July 2025 into an operating payment rail. The option sits inside the retailer’s existing point-of-sale and e-commerce systems rather than beside them, and it is limited to eligible UAE residents, with Dubai Duty Free settled entirely in dirhams.
Ramesh Cidambi, Managing Director of Dubai Duty Free said:
How the Checkout Works?
In-store, selecting Crypto.com Pay prompts the point-of-sale terminal to generate a QR code for the purchase amount in AED. The customer scans it inside the Crypto.com app, approves the payment from their wallet, and the transaction confirms through Dubai Duty Free’s existing POS system. Online, the retailer’s checkout generates the same QR flow before an order is confirmed through its order management system, and mobile shoppers are redirected into the Crypto.com app to approve before returning to complete the purchase.
The crypto leg stays invisible to the merchant. Authorization happens inside the customer’s wallet, and settlement lands in dirhams on Dubai Duty Free’s side. Crypto.com Pay now joins Apple Pay, Alipay and TerraPay in the retailer’s checkout options, adding a fourth rail rather than replacing any existing one.
The License Behind the Rollout
The rollout follows a regulatory clearance, not just an engineering build. Crypto.com is the first Virtual Asset Service Provider in the UAE to hold a Stored Value Facilities licence from the Central Bank of the UAE, with its local entity, Foris DAX Middle East, securing the licence in May 2026. That licence is what let Crypto.com plug into a retailer as large as Dubai Duty Free, which reported record 2025 sales of Dhs8.680 billion (US$2.378 billion), up 9.85% from the prior year.
Eric Anziani, President and Chief Operating Officer of Crypto.com said:
A Second UAE Launch in Two Weeks
Dubai Duty Free is not the first major UAE brand to switch this rail on. Emirates activated Crypto.com Pay for UAE-resident, AED-denominated flight bookings on July 28, 2026, having signed its own MoU with Crypto.com on July 9, 2025. Both launches landed under the same licence and the same eligibility restrictions, and both arrived roughly a year after their respective MoUs, a gap that tracks the time it took Crypto.com to clear the Central Bank’s Stored Value Facilities process rather than any product delay.
Both rollouts also feed the Dubai Cashless Strategy, introduced in October 2024 by Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, which targets 90% of transactions across the public and private sectors becoming cashless by the end of 2026.
CoinLaw’s Takeaway
The sequencing here is the story more than the technology. Crypto.com built the QR and wallet checkout flow well before this launch, but the Stored Value Facilities licence set the actual timetable, and Dubai Duty Free and Emirates went live within roughly two weeks of each other because that is when the regulatory clearance became usable at scale. For a retailer processing Dhs8.680 billion a year, the pace of adoption depends less on engineering readiness and more on the pace of licensing.
The UAE resident restriction is the other structural detail worth noting. Neither Dubai Duty Free nor Emirates has opened the option to international travelers, which keeps this a domestic wallet-to-dirham rail rather than a cross-border payment product. Whether that eligibility scope widens depends on further Central Bank guidance, and any expansion would still route through the same SVF licence framework rather than a new product decision by either company.
