Visa has added the UAE’s domestic card scheme Jaywan to its Visa Acceptance Platform: participating merchants, acquirers and payment service providers can accept Jaywan online — including subscriptions and one-click checkouts via Visa Token Management Service.
The move was announced on 6 November 2026 by Al Etihad Payments and Visa. For UAE online businesses the headline is simple: domestic Jaywan debit, credit and prepaid cards can now be accepted using the same acceptance stack a site or mobile app already uses for Visa.
What has changed
Until now Jaywan cards, issued by UAE banks, worked strongly in-person and across the national ATM network, while online acceptance ran mostly through the co-branded Jaywan-Visa cards launched in March 2025. With this update, any merchant, acquirer or PSP connected to the Visa Acceptance Platform sees Jaywan as another payment method, with the same capabilities: card-on-file, recurring transactions, subscriptions and digital wallets.
Tokenisation of Jaywan cards is handled by Visa Token Management Service (TMS): the card number is replaced with a secure token stored on the platform side and used for future charges. That reduces PAN-storage risk for merchants and simplifies PCI DSS compliance.
Who it affects
Three groups see direct benefit:
- UAE online merchants — e-commerce, SaaS, marketplaces, subscription services. A Jaywan cardholder no longer needs to reach for another card at checkout; the domestic card works.
- Acquirers and PSPs — one Visa integration contour gives access to the UAE domestic scheme without a separate project.
- Jaywan-issuing banks — the use cases for the card expand, raising its value to the holder.
Context: Jaywan and Al Etihad Payments
Jaywan is the UAE’s first national card scheme, operated by Al Etihad Payments (AEP), a subsidiary of the Central Bank of the UAE. Its mission is to clear domestic card transactions inside the country and reduce reliance on external networks. For a wider view of the domestic payments stack and what it means for business, see our guide to the UAE national payment card Jaywan. For companies still setting up online acceptance, the practical bottleneck is often not the card scheme but the corporate bank account in the UAE.
What the parties said
“Enabling Jaywan on the Visa Acceptance Platform embeds the UAE’s domestic card scheme further into the infrastructure supporting digital commerce,” said Andrea Cianchetti, Chief Products Officer at Al Etihad Payments.
“By enabling participating merchants, acquirers and payment service providers to support Jaywan through the platform, we are helping expand payment choice while delivering the secure, reliable and seamless experiences consumers and businesses expect,” said Fadi Moukaddem, Regional General Manager for UAE, Kuwait and Qatar at Visa.
What businesses should do
If online payments already run through a PSP on the Visa Acceptance Platform, no new integration is needed — enabling Jaywan is handled with the acquirer or PSP. Older contracts should be checked to see whether Jaywan is already in the supported methods list. New projects should specify Jaywan support in the acceptance brief from the start.
This article is informational. The technical and commercial details of enabling Jaywan via the Visa Acceptance Platform depend on the specific acquirer or PSP; terms and packages vary by provider.
