News

Saudi Digital Payments Reach 80% As Cash Use Shrinks

Visa data shows cards and mobile wallets dominate spending, with smartphones now driving a growing share of daily transactions.

Published

6 months ago

January 23, 2026

Nour Nasir

saudi digital payments reach 80% as cash use shrinks

Digital payments now account for 80% of all transactions in Saudi Arabia, according to Visa’s latest Where Cash Hides report, another marker of how quickly the Kingdom is moving away from cash.

The share is up four percentage points from a year ago. Around 67% of consumers are now largely non-cash users, paying mainly with cards or mobile wallets. Smartphones are taking a bigger role, with mobile payments making up 16% of transactions.

visa where cash hides saudi arabia 2026

Cash is retreating in routine spending. Eating out dropped 9%. Bill payments fell 8%, as shoppers opt for faster checkouts and app-based payments.

“The data shows a steady move toward digital payments in Saudi Arabia. Such progress is possible only because banks, fintechs, merchants, and technology partners are moving together in the same direction, in line with the Kingdom’s Vision 2030,” said Ali Bailoun, Visa’s Senior Vice President and Group Country Manager for Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Oman.

Also Read: UAE Users Sleep Less, But More Efficiently, ŌURA Data Reveals

Despite the recent findings, it’s important to note that cash hasn’t yet disappeared. It still shows up for tips (39%), peer-to-peer transfers (28%) and rent (14%).

Visa points to security features such as tokenization, along with rewards and cashback, as factors nudging more spending onto cards and phones — a shift that tracks with Saudi Arabia’s wider Vision 2030 push to digitize commerce.

News

Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 9 And Ultra 2 Specs Leak Ahead Of Unpacked

An 800mAh Ultra 2 battery and a switch from Exynos to Qualcomm silicon headline the expected changes for Samsung’s next smartwatches.

Published

4 hours ago

July 15, 2026

Nour Nasir

samsung's galaxy watch 9 and ultra 2 specs leak ahead of unpacked

Samsung’s next smartwatches have little left to hide. A new leak reported by Android Authority has surfaced most of the remaining details about the Galaxy Watch 9 and Galaxy Watch Ultra 2, just over a week before the company’s Galaxy Unpacked event on July 22.

The biggest change is an invisible one: Samsung is expected to drop its own Exynos W1000 chip in favor of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear Elite SW6100, a chipset unveiled only this year, according to the outlet.

Battery capacity looks like the other notable upgrade. Citing a report from Winfuture, Android Authority says the Watch Ultra 2 could reach 800mAh, well beyond the 590mAh cell in the current Watch Ultra. The 44mm Watch 9 reportedly gets a 445mAh cell — the same capacity as last year’s Watch 8 Classic — while the 40mm model stays at 325mAh.

The 40mm Watch 9 will reportedly feature a 438 x 438-pixel panel, with the 44mm Watch 9 and the Watch Ultra 2 sharing a larger 480 x 480-pixel screen. Samsung leaker Ice Universe has separately claimed the Ultra 2’s display could reach a peak brightness of 5,000 nits. RAM and storage vary by model, topping out at 2GB and 64GB.

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The Ultra 2 keeps its titanium case and 100-meter water resistance; the standard Watch 9 remains aluminum, rated to 5 ATM. All models are said to include Bluetooth 6.0, NFC, and dual-band WiFi, with the usual LTE variants, and ship with One UI 9 Watch running on Wear OS 7.

A separate leak puts the Galaxy Watch 9 at €409 (about $468) for the 40mm Bluetooth model, rising to €489 (about $560) for the 44mm LTE version, with the Watch Ultra 2 LTE at €749 (about $857) — figures Android Authority said were partially corroborated by Winfuture. Confirmation arrives on stage on July 22.