More UAE consumers now pay with credit, debit cards instead of cash
Ankit Sharma
<p>Dubai: For many people in the UAE, cash is dying. According to the latest data supplied by a market research firm, UAE consumers are increasingly living in a cashless world and abandoning their beloved paper bills and coins in favour of plastic money.</p> <p>From paying for everyday things, restaurant meals and utility bills and footing the cost of high-value transactions, residents are just content with swiping away their cards.</p> <p>The latest data from Euromonitor International showed that UAE consumers splashed out a whopping $59 billion (Dh216 billion) on goods and services using only their credit, debit and prepaid cards in 2017.</p> <p>The figure accounts for 45 per cent of all sales transactions at retail shops and other business outlets around the country – more than all the other payment types combined in the UAE. By 2020, plastic money will clearly overtake cash as a preferred mode of payment, representing a little over 50 per cent of all transactions.</p> <p>Cash payments, on the other hand, were worth a total of $40 billion last year, accounting for just a third of all the transactions. And by 2020, paper money will represent only 27.8 per cent of all purchases, down from 31.7 per cent in 2017.</p> <p>Source:-<a href="http://gulfnews.com/business/money/more-uae-consumers-now-pay-with-credit-debit-cards-instead-of-cash-1.2198200" target="_blank"><span style="color:#000000">http://gulfnews.com/business/money/more-uae-consumers-now-pay-with-credit-debit-cards-instead-of-cash-1.2198200</span></a></p>