Selling online across MENA: the region is two markets, not one

The single most common mistake we see in regional e-commerce briefs is the phrase "the MENA market", used as though it describes one set of customer behaviours. On payment and delivery — the two things that determine whether a cart converts — the region splits cleanly in half, and the halves are moving in opposite directions.

The Gulf is going cashless quickly

Checkout.com's regional research put preference for cash on delivery across MENA at 41% in 2020 and 20% by 2023 — halved in four years. In the maturing Gulf markets the fall is steeper still, with cash preference reported as low as around 10% in places like Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait.

Card penetration, digital wallets and domestic schemes have filled the gap. If you are building for Dubai or Riyadh in 2026 and your checkout is COD-first, you have built for 2019.

North Africa has not moved the same way

Morocco and Algeria still lean heavily on cash on delivery, for reasons that are structural rather than habitual — lower card penetration and a trust relationship with online payment that has not yet been earned. Tunisia sits in similar territory. The gap between North Africa and the Gulf is widening rather than closing.

So a single checkout configuration cannot serve both. A Gulf-optimised store launched in Morocco will convert badly, and a COD-first store launched in the UAE looks dated to customers who have moved on.

One store, two payment strategies, switched by market. Anything simpler is leaving money in the cart.

What the store actually has to support

• Cash on delivery, done properly — not bolted on. COD brings order verification, failed-delivery rates and cash reconciliation with the courier. The operational cost is real and belongs in the margin model.
• Local card schemes — international Visa and Mastercard acceptance is not the same as supporting the domestic rails customers actually hold.
• Wallets — the fastest-growing segment in the Gulf, and the default for younger buyers.
• Local currency pricing — displayed in the customer's currency, not converted at checkout, which is where trust evaporates.
• VAT handling per country — rates and registration thresholds differ across the region and are not a detail you retrofit.
• Arabic as a first-class language — not a translated afterthought. We covered the technical side of this in our piece on trilingual builds.

Failed payments cost more than you think

One finding from the same research is worth acting on immediately: roughly a third of MENA shoppers said they would move to a competitor's site after a single failed payment. Not after a bad experience over time — after one decline.

Which makes payment reliability a conversion feature rather than a back-office concern. Retry logic, clear decline messaging, and an alternative method offered at the point of failure are cheap to build and are the difference between a recovered order and a lost customer.

Social is a sales channel here, not a marketing channel

Something Western e-commerce playbooks consistently understate: a meaningful share of regional transactions begin and sometimes complete in a messaging app. One Saudi travel business publicly reported a tenth of its sales coming through WhatsApp.

If a serious slice of your buyers want to complete a purchase in a conversation, a checkout that only exists on a website is a constraint you have chosen. Plan for the conversation — staffed, with a payment route attached — rather than treating it as overflow support.

Returns and delivery expectations

COD markets have higher refusal rates at the door. That is not fraud; it is what happens when the commitment to buy is made at delivery rather than at checkout. It changes your logistics cost, your stock planning and your discounting strategy.

The brands that handle this well reduce refusals upstream — clear sizing, honest photography, order confirmation by message before dispatch — rather than absorbing the cost downstream.

How we would sequence a regional launch

Pick one market, get the payment mix and the delivery economics right there, then expand with a configuration per market rather than a single global one. Launching across eight countries simultaneously with one checkout is how budgets disappear.

We build and run stores across both halves of this region from offices in Tunisia and Canada, which is the reason we are fairly insistent about the split. If you are planning a regional launch, our web development and industries pages set out how we approach it.