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Trust in fintech and digital payment companies among UAE residents rose sharply over the past year, according to the 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer’s financial services report. The study, with fieldwork conducted from 23 October to 18 November 2025 across 28 countries and more than 33,000 respondents, found that 81% of the UAE respondents trust fintech and digital payment companies, up 15 points from the year before, and now close to the 86% who say they trust banks.
“A 15-point jump in a single year is a significant move for any measure of institutional trust,” said Ivo Bozukov, a payments industry executive who works in the digital payments sector. “Trust in financial services generally builds slowly and can fall quickly, so a rise of that size suggests something concrete has been shifting how people experience these services, not just a change in mood.”
The gap between fintech and banks narrowing to five points is itself worth noting. Trust of that kind tends to accumulate over years of consistent, unremarkable service.
The Groundwork Already in Place
Part of what has allowed digital payment adoption to reach this point is how widely the basic infrastructure already exists. Mobile phone ownership in the UAE stood at 100% in 2025, according to the country’s telecoms regulator, meaning mobile phones are already universal among residents, which is the starting point for any digital payment or wallet service.
Wage payments have moved onto formal digital rails at a similar pace. The Wages Protection System, the UAE’s national system for paying employee wages, had 7.26 million employees registered in 2025, up from 6.06 million in 2024. That is an increase of 1.2 million registered employees in a single year, all of them paid through the national system.
“When wage payments themselves run through a digital system, it normalises digital finance for a huge number of people as a routine part of daily life, not something separate from everyday life,” Bozoukov said. “That kind of everyday exposure does more for trust over time than any single marketing campaign could.”
Taken together, phone ownership at 100% and a wages system that now covers well over seven million employees mean most UAE residents are already interacting with digital financial infrastructure before they ever choose a fintech app or wallet for themselves.
What the Rules Require of Every Provider
Behind the trust figures sits a consistent set of requirements that apply to every licensed financial institution serving individual customers in the UAE, including wallet and payment firms. The Central Bank’s consumer protection rules require fees to be displayed clearly on a provider’s website, and customers to be given at least 60 calendar days’ notice before a change to fees or to terms and conditions takes effect.
“Those two requirements sound simple, but they cover two of the most common sources of frustration with any financial product: not knowing what something costs, and being caught out by a change you weren’t told about,” Ivaylo Bozoukov said. “Requiring both transparency up front and advance notice of changes removes a lot of the friction that otherwise erodes confidence over time.”
A 60-day notice period is also long enough for a customer to act on it, whether that means adjusting how they use a service or, if they choose to, moving to a different provider before a new fee takes effect. Rules that only required disclosure after the fact would offer far less practical protection than a requirement that gives customers real time to respond.
What Keeping That Trust Requires
The scale of the increase in the Edelman findings suggests UAE fintech and digital payment providers have, collectively, been doing something right. But a rise of this kind is also, by its nature, something that has to be maintained rather than banked. The same factors that appear to have built this trust — clear costs, fair warning of changes, and money that is kept safe — are also the factors that would erode it if providers began to fall short on any of them.
“Trust in a financial product is rarely about a single dramatic moment,” Ivo Bozukov said. “It’s built through hundreds of ordinary interactions where a customer’s expectations are met: the fee was what the website said it would be, the notice arrived before the change did, the balance was there when they checked. Keeping trust at this level means continuing to get those basics right, consistently, for as long as the relationship lasts.”
Digital payments continue to embed themselves further into daily life in the UAE, from wage payment to routine transfers. The requirements that underpin the 2026 report’s trust figures look set to remain the standard against which providers are measured, whether the market they serve keeps growing or settles into a more mature pattern of daily use.
