News

MENA Among World’s Fastest-Growing Digital Economies

The region is leading fintech adoption worldwide, with eCommerce, AI tools, and real-time payments reshaping the wider digital economy.

Published

1 year ago

May 23, 2025

Nour Nasir

mena among world's fastest-growing digital economies checkout finds

The Middle East and North Africa have emerged as one of the world’s most forward-moving digital economies, according to Checkout.com’s fifth annual State of Digital Commerce in MENA 2025 report. The study highlights how bold moves by central banks, regulators, and fintech innovators — combined with a digitally native population — are accelerating the region’s shift to a tech-driven economy.

Over the past five years, daily online transactions across MENA have surged by 139%, while Checkout.com’s own processing volumes have climbed 626%, including a 78% year-on-year increase. Food delivery now dominates as the leading eCommerce category, capturing 47% of online spending, followed by clothing and fashion (38%) and a tie between electronics and beauty products (34%).

frequency of online shopping in mena 2025

MENA consumers are also reshaping financial habits. In the UAE alone, the use of Account Funding Transactions (AFTs) — which enable real-time digital payouts — has grown 388% in the past year. This shift is extending digital commerce well beyond shopping into areas like salary payments, gig economy wages, and peer-to-peer transfers. Meanwhile, the once-dominant cash-on-delivery model has dropped by 60% since 2020.

Fintech and AI continue to be key pillars of the region’s evolution. A reported 62% of users now engage with fintech platforms for investments and wealth management, while 43% send money weekly via digital wallets or apps. AI-driven shopping is already widely adopted, with 45% of consumers having used generative chatbots and 53% using visual search tools to support online purchases.

Also Read: A Guide To Digital Payment Methods In The Middle East

However, this increased digital maturity comes with new risks: Reports of online fraud have increased sharply — from 33% in 2023 to 49% in 2024 — driven in part by scams involving AI and deepfakes. Checkout.com highlights the growing need for intelligent fraud prevention, pointing to tools such as machine learning, behavioral biometrics, and anomaly detection as critical to maintaining security without compromising performance.

“In this increasingly competitive landscape, payment performance has become a critical differentiator,” said Remo Giovanni Abbondandolo, General Manager, MENA at Checkout.com. “Fast, secure, and intelligent payments are foundational to commercial success — not just at the point of transaction, but across the entire customer experience”.

News

A Three-Clinic Network Bets Dubai Is Ready For Longevity Medicine

Longevium has enlisted nearly 100 clinicians and created an AI platform in a bid to sell biological-age tracking as a medicine, not a wellness service.

Published

2 days ago

July 13, 2026

Dana Saadeh

a three-clinic network bets dubai is ready for longevity medicine

Dubai has been busily creating the scaffolding for a longevity industry, including a dedicated regulatory authority and a health market deep enough to sustain it. Now the clinics are arriving.

Longevium, a longevity clinic network, has opened three locations across the city: a flagship at Triple Seven Mall on Jumeirah 3, and branches in Jumeirah Lake Towers and Jumeirah Village Circle. Together they house a multidisciplinary team of nearly 100 physicians and specialists offering what the company bills as “a measurable medical system for longevity”.

longevity dubai clinic launch

The pitch is that longevity medicine should look less like a wellness menu and more like continuous clinical care. Each patient’s biological age assessment, laboratory results, body composition, cardiovascular risk factors, metabolic markers, and lifestyle data feed into a single profile, with a proprietary AI platform helping physicians track progress and adjust protocols against the patient’s own biomarkers.

“Healthy aging must be approached clinically through diagnostics, biomarkers, physician supervision, longitudinal tracking, and protocols tailored to the individual,” said Dr. Ksenia Butova, Longevium’s founder and CEO. “Our goal is to help patients understand their health trajectory before disease develops, and then actively change that trajectory”.

The treatment list spans peptide-based protocols, exosome therapies, stem cell approaches, GLP-1 metabolic optimization, hormone balance programs, cardiovascular prevention, and regenerative aesthetics — a model built for the entrepreneurs, executives, and international patients the clinic says want measurable results rather than generic wellness. A signature offering, Longevity Day, compresses biomarker testing, ultrasound and vascular imaging, specialist consultations, IV therapy, and a personalized optimization roadmap into a single three-hour visit.

Also Read: Dubai Certifies The World’s First Purpose-Built Air Taxi Vertiport

“Here, longevity, biotechnology, AI, prevention, and regenerative medicine are converging into a single ecosystem,” said Butova. “This is why Longevium was built in Dubai, and why we believe the UAE can become a global reference point for longevity medicine”.

The emirate established the Dubai Longevity Authority in 2026 to oversee its longevity, wellness, and advanced health sectors, and the Dubai Health Authority reported insured beneficiaries exceeding 4.9 million in 2025, up around 6.5%, with insurance claims reaching approximately 49.6 million, up around 13.5%.