Visa couch economy report: 55% of domestic card spending in the UAE now happens online or in apps.

Visa Business and Economic Insights' report The great indoors: How the "couch" is redefining consumer spending habits tracks how much spending now happens from home. Built on anonymised transaction data from six markets, it finds that in the UAE online and in-app payments rose from 35% of domestic card spending in 2019 to 55% in 2026.

Visa calls it the couch economy: shopping, food, entertainment and pet care increasingly bought on screens and at home. The report was published in September 2026, and Visa released its UAE findings in Dubai on 12 October. In Visa's global release, Mohamed Bardastani, Visa's principal economist for Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said that across the region convenience "has become a defining feature of modern consumer behavior".

Key findings

• Most UAE card spending is now remote. Online and in-app payments account for 55% of domestic payment volume in the UAE, meaning UAE-issued cards used at UAE merchants, up from 35% in 2019. In the US the share rose from 48% to 58%, and in Poland from 10% to 24%.
• Frequent online buying has taken off. 25.7% of UAE cards now make 10 or more online or in-app payments a month, up from 4.5% in 2018. The share is 25.4% in the US and 27.8% in the UK.
• Delivery has gone mass-market. The share of UAE cards active on food delivery apps rose from about 2% in 2018 to nearly 30% in 2026, against roughly 15% in the UK. Most of the growth came from everyday spenders rather than high spenders.
• Subscriptions beat nights out. In every market, streaming and pay-TV subscriptions reach more cards than cinema and concert spending. In the US, more than 17% of cards have active streaming subscriptions, against roughly 6% with cinema and concert spending.
• Pets are part of the picture. Regular spending at pet merchants, which Visa uses as a proxy for pet ownership, appears on roughly 8% of US cards, and Visa says the UAE posted notable increases.

How the research was done

The report uses anonymised VisaNet data on Visa credit, debit and prepaid card transactions in Australia, Brazil, Poland, the UAE, the UK and the US, mostly covering 2018 to 2026. It measures card behaviour, not people: a card active on a delivery app is not the same as a household, and spending on other networks, in cash or by other payment methods isn't counted. Pet ownership is estimated from regular spending at pet merchants. Some comparisons in the report appear only in charts, and we have used only figures Visa states in the report's text or in its two releases. Saudi Arabia is not among the six markets.

What it means for marketers

For UAE retailers and brands, the report puts numbers on a shift most can already feel: the decision and the payment increasingly happen inside apps, at home. Visa's advice is to make checkout fast, trusted and built into the apps people already use, to invest in delivery and digital commerce now, and to treat subscriptions and repeat use as revenue in their own right.

The food delivery figure stands out. With nearly three in ten UAE cards active on delivery apps, and growth driven by everyday spenders rather than the affluent, delivery platforms have become a mass-market channel for food and grocery brands, and a place where visibility in the app matters as much as the menu.

About this report

Published by Visa Business and Economic Insights, September 2026. Free. Get the full report from Visa

Sources

• Visa Business and Economic Insights, The great indoors: How the "couch" is redefining consumer spending habits, September 2026
• Visa, Visa Research: The Rise of the "Couch Economy" Is Reshaping Consumer Spending, 14 September 2026
• Visa, Visa data reveals the UAE's "Couch Economy", with online and in-app payments exceeding half of domestic payment volume, 12 October 2026