Visa Study Finds 72% of UAE Shoppers Used AI on Their Latest Purchase

The figures come from the 2026 Global Digital Shopping Index, whose UAE edition draws on 1,270 consumers in the country. PYMNTS said the wider study, carried out in March 2026, surveyed 5,241 consumers and 1,185 merchants across the UAE, Brazil and the US, with samples weighted to reflect national adult populations. PYMNTS first published the UAE findings in September.

The research matters to retailers and payment companies because it points to a gap between what UAE consumers expect and what merchants can support. Seventy-one per cent of UAE consumers said they expect to rely on an AI shopping agent within the next two years to compare products, make recommendations and complete purchases for them. Yet only 19% of UAE merchants said they hold structured product data that AI agents can read efficiently, and just 31% said they can clearly identify which of their sales come through AI platforms.

Merchants appear to see the opportunity. According to the study, 74% of them expect sales carried out by AI agents to account for at least 5% of their total sales within two years, and 42% think such sales could exceed 16%.

UAE shoppers were also the most digitally active of the three markets, averaging 2.3 digital shopping activities a day. PYMNTS said that figure was up 5% from 2024, with online ordering for in-store pickup up 15% and mobile phone use inside stores up 11%.

Control over spending is the main condition for handing purchases to software. More than 82% of UAE shoppers said they would let an AI agent buy on their behalf without supervision as long as they could set a spending limit. PYMNTS said more than half of them would cap such purchases at $100. Consumers also said they prefer to grant access to personal and payment data case by case, rather than all at once.

Payment choice weighs heavily as well. Eighty-six per cent of UAE shoppers said the availability of their preferred payment method directly affects where they shop, the highest share among the markets surveyed.

Mario Maccari, head of Visa's UAE office, said consumers in the country are ready for the next stage of AI-driven commerce and that the priority now is closing the gap between merchants' expectations and their actual readiness, according to Al Bayan. He said merchants need structured data and reliable infrastructure so AI agents can move safely from product discovery to completed transactions, while consumers keep control over how, when and where their money is spent.

Visa is pitching tokenisation, which replaces card details with digital stand-ins, as one way to let agents pay within limits that consumers set. The company launched its Agentic Ready programme for agent-led payments in the UAE in May, enlisting local banks to test the approach.