UAE's Jaywan debit cards to offer special deals on launch

Dubai: The UAE’s domestic debit card scheme – Jaywan - will launch offering 'generous' incentives and promotions to 'speed up acceptance' among all the cardholders.

This will be a key element in ensuring the immediate acceptance of Jaywan among its user base of all individual bank account holders in the UAE.

“Jaywan will be used for grocery buys, online purchases and all kinds of day-to-day activities,” said Jan Pilbauer, CEO of Al Etihad Payments, which is part of the UAE Central Bank and the entity overseeing the development and launch of the Jaywan debit card scheme. (The scheme was announced in February 2025.)

On the reason for backing the launch with incentives for users, Pilbauer said: “People in the UAE have been so used to expecting more from their cards. That’s the reason why we will have a couple of ‘variants’ with Jaywan

 “Your bank or card issuer will decide with the cardholder which variant of Jaywan you want to sign up for – that decides the benefits.”

That would mean offers/discounts when booking a cinema ticket, or insurance coverage that credit cards offer. “There could also be access to airport lounges or ‘buy one, get one free’ offers – what we are trying to make sure is that there is value to using the card for the holder each time he uses it,” said Pilbauer.  “The Jaywan has been carefully put together to serve the UAE national market.”   

And it will not stop there – ‘More features and benefits will be added to the cards’, said Pilbauer.

In recent months, Al Etihad Payments has accelerated the new card’s back-end integration with payments platforms, point-of-sale merchants and online marketplaces to test out all the minute details before it goes live in full.

“Throughout the rest of this year and in 2026, every single debit card issued in the UAE will have to be a Jaywan – that’s the mandate from the Central Bank,” said Pilbauer. “Or it can be a flavor of the Jaywan, which means there can be a co-badging with another entity. We also have partnerships with different international card schemes.

With the Jaywan, cardholders can do the whole gamut of taking out cash from an ATM to making a payment on your latest online shopping. But how soon can they actually start doing so?

“We are very close - Jaywan is ‘live’ technically,” said Pilbauer. “There are some who already hold the cards. By mid-2025, banks should be sending out the cards to account holders.”

So, who gets these cards? All individuals with a bank account or salary card from exchange houses will get the Jaywan. Cardholders will also be able to use these when they travel outside of the country. That’s where the international associations come in, whether it’s with Visa, Mastercard, Discover, Union Pay or any other.

When it comes to online payments, there are pilot projects going on. “There are multiple ecommerce gateways that cover the different online purchases in the country,” said Pilbauer. “We still have some work to do to nail online transactions using Jaywan.

“We had to go to the likes of Google, Apple and Samsung to convince them they needed to ‘teach’ their digital wallet to ‘speak’ Jaywan and talk to our systems for the tokenization of the card and all of these things.

“This takes time, because these are large international players you have to work with and have them bring Jaywan into their own development pipelines. This way, we will be part of their apps, their operating systems and their new releases or updates.”