Visa Adds UAE's Jaywan Domestic Cards to Its Online Acceptance Platform

The change widens where Jaywan cards can be used online. That matters for a scheme the UAE built to keep more domestic card payments on local infrastructure, and it brings in Visa, one of the international networks the scheme was set up alongside. Jaywan is run by Al Etihad Payments, a subsidiary of the Central Bank of the UAE.

The Visa Acceptance Platform combines payment acceptance, authentication and tokenisation in one service, and handles card-on-file payments, recurring charges and digital wallets. For Jaywan cards, Visa said the platform will support card-on-file network tokenisation through its Token Management Service. Tokenisation replaces stored card numbers with substitute values, and Visa said this will help businesses manage recurring payments and subscriptions securely.

The integration builds on an agreement Al Etihad Payments and Visa announced in March 2025 to issue co-badged Jaywan-Visa debit and prepaid cards, which can be used on Visa's network outside the UAE.

"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.

Fadi Moukaddem, Visa's regional general manager for the UAE, Kuwait and Qatar, said the move would help "expand payment choice while delivering the secure, reliable and seamless experiences consumers and businesses expect."

Jaywan went live with merchants in July, and several acquirers have since added it to their online gateways, including Network International and Checkout.com. Visa did not say how many merchants on its platform have switched on Jaywan acceptance or when the option will be available to all of them.