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UAE Stores May Soon Accept Payments Through Your Palm
The technology is known as PalmPay and will be rolled out throughout 2024, allowing users to leave their phones and bank cards at home.
Shoppers in the United Arab Emirates may soon be able to leave their phones and bank cards at home as a new payment technology rolls out across the country this year.
PalmPay, a system devised by developers Astra Tech, uses contactless biometric palm recognition technology. It allows users to hover their hand over a payment terminal to make a payment, just like in a sci-fi movie.
“The rollout of the PalmPay technology is planned to happen gradually throughout 2024,” Abdallah Abu Sheikh, founder of Astra Tech, explained. “We currently have a certain number of machines which will be used for testing purposes within the local market infrastructure [ensuring] complete readiness for scaling to over 50,000 PayBy merchants throughout the year,” Sheikh added.
PayBy is a popular UAE payment platform and fintech subsidiary of Astra Tech. The company also has plans to integrate the palm recognition technology with banks “in the future”, enabling users to link their accounts with it.
PalmPay will be free for users who will be able to register using their devices at special point-of-sale terminals. In the future, palm authentication will be integrated into apps, allowing customers to update their accounts with palm prints through an authentication feature on their phones.
Also Read: A Guide To Digital Payment Methods In The Middle East
Astra Tech says the technology is more secure than traditional card payments and is not limited to specific industries or sectors. The company believes PalmPay will work especially well in high-volume sectors such as retail stores and could significantly speed up the checkout experience during busy times.
Aside from the wow factor, PalmPay is said to be a “cost-effective solution” for merchants and could help “financial inclusion for the unbanked population”, Astra Tech explained.
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LUVED Is A New Curated Preloved Marketplace For The UAE
Sellers keep 100 percent of every sale and AI can build a listing in five seconds — though the app’s smartest tools are still coming.
Secondhand shopping has become mainstream in the UAE, but the experience is still scattered across resale sites, social media and informal group chats. LUVED, a mobile-first marketplace that launched in Dubai this month, is betting it can pull that activity into one place — and that the thing buyers and sellers actually want is not more inventory, but trust.
The app trades in what it calls circular luxury: preloved fashion and lifestyle pieces across men’s, women’s and children’s categories, bought, sold or given away peer to peer. Its main pitch is economics, with sellers keeping 100 percent of every sale under a zero-commission, fast payout model, while buyers are promised vetted pieces at lower prices.
Where LUVED is staking its reputation is verification. Sellers pass a KYC check, and items run through a two-layer authentication system powered by Entrupy that pairs instant AI screening with human expert review for high-value pieces. Authenticity certificates travel with each item, payments sit in escrow, and a buyer-protection package the company calls The Safety Net adds a 48-hour return window and dispute resolution. Door-to-door logistics removes the in-person meetups that make most resale deals awkward.
An in-app assistant called Luvbot — offering selling insights and demand-based recommendations — is soon to be introduced to the platform. Other features include autofill and dynamic pricing that lets users build a listing in as little as five seconds from three photos, plus a swipe-based feed, story-style drops and in-app chat in English and Arabic. Finally, a gifting layer, Luved & Gifted, lets users pass items to others inside the app rather than sell them.
Also Read: Logitech’s New Folding Mouse Is Designed For Work On The Go
“After moving to Dubai, I saw how difficult it was to sell or even give things away,” says founder and CEO Shaima Sibtain. The friction is real, and so is the competition. In resale, trust is won transaction by transaction — and that is the test LUVED has set itself.
The app is live on the App Store now, with Google Play to follow. The company also plans to expand across the region, which will be the real test for a marketplace staking everything on trust.
