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Saudi Arabia is seeing an explosion in online shopping. It’s an appealing market for tech-forward merchants who want to reach consumers on digital platforms. What we see in the region is energetic competition to provide the best customer experience and capture share of customers.
When I hosted a panel on the topic of mastering payments in Saudi Arabia at Thrive Abu Dhabi this April, I was joined on stage by Basem Alsallom, CEO, Solutions Valley (a Saudi Electricity subsidiary) and Board Member of several fintech companies, Muath Khilifawi, CCO, Salla, and Hamdi Missaoui, CCO and Co-Founder, webook.com.
Together we discussed the importance of localization, and building trust through sensitivity towards consumer concerns in this country.
Let’s take a closer look at this transformation. In this piece, I’ll highlight some core strategies to reach customers online in KSA, setting payments in the wider context of customer experience and revenue capture.
Key digital commerce trends in Saudi Arabia
Opinions and “hunches” will only get you so far; expertise and data are the real building blocks of strategy. Our new report, The State of Digital Commerce in MENA, draws on a survey of 18,000 consumers in partnership with statistics experts at YouGov.
What we found is Saudis are shopping online more frequently over the past five years, and increasingly prefer to pay with Mada (launched on smart devices in 2019) or global digital wallets rather than cash-on-delivery. Consumers in KSA are becoming more tech-savvy and security-conscious, with a sensitivity to the safety of online payments.
- Saudi Arabia has seen a 300% surge in people shopping online daily since 2020 – one in four (24%) of consumers are doing so in 2025.
- A quarter (24%) of consumers in KSA shop online at least once per week
With a population of over 34.5 million, and a government target to increase the growth rate of digital payments 70% by 2030, Saudi Arabia is investing in its digital economy.
How to find your customers – and help them find you
- 61% of KSA consumers anticipate they will spend more online in the next 12 months
Not only are Saudis buying online more often, but they’re looking to spend more, too. Therefore, it pays to make it easy for customers to find you. That’s why you should consider your marketing and sales technology: how up-to-date are your payments and social media integrations with your website, apps, and other digital platforms?
Reaching a tech-savvy customer base
- One in three (36%) shoppers in Saudi Arabia check for a better deal on their smartphone while shopping in-store
- One in four (25%) Saudis have shopped on platforms like Meta, TikTok or Instagram
In the digital economy, you need to know where your customers are shopping. It’s worth looking into the typical age of your customers, so you can anticipate how they browse and buy online. Our latest report has more detailed information on this, and during the panel Basem shared his insights: “Each generation wants to find information in their own way. Usually I would search on Google for something, but my daughter will search on TikTok because it’s quicker and easier for her.” As technology advances, merchants cannot take for granted that shopping looks the same in 2025 as it did in 2020, or even 2024. Artificial intelligence is already shaping the way consumers buy online across the Middle East and North Africa region – 31% of consumers in MENA say AI search tools are the top driver of their purchasing decisions.
Basem continued: “Recently, AI has been influencing some of our behavior. Instead of comparing products across multiple sites, we let AI do the research for us. Previously, new solutions were focused on being mobile-friendly. Now it’s important to be AI-friendly.”
Upgrades in artificial intelligence are unveiled every day, so it’s critical to follow the news in this area, and learn as much as you can. So-called “agentic commerce” is a new shopping feature appearing on chat tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and others. It’s when a customer instructs an AI “agent” to buy an item or service on their behalf. Of course, it’s crucial to build trust with your customer when deploying such tech.
Keeping alert to such trends will show your brand is future-oriented, and ready to serve the changing needs of digital consumers. For example, stc announced a new partnership to integrate “AI Employees into Saudi businesses, automating complex workflows, improving decision-making, and ensuring seamless interactions across internal systems and customer touchpoints.” Clearly, AI is speeding up the race to provide smoother connections between businesses and consumers.
The way you present yourself on digital platforms does a lot to communicate your company values and competence. This will affect the way customers see you, and should influence your strategic direction.
The importance of partnership
When you’re scaling your business into new territories, it makes sense to seek support from partners with existing infrastructure in your target markets.
Salla is an ecommerce enablement platform with tools to help merchants launch and manage online stores. So when its merchants want to expand across borders, Salla depends on partnerships to facilitate this.
“When we have merchants that would like to expand online to 34 different countries, it’s very difficult for us to do that without having very strong global partners with broad coverage on payments,” said Muath Khlifawi, Chief Commercial Officer of Salla. “Having global players like Checkout.com is really important for us.”
With a well-established presence in the Middle East, Checkout.com is a market leader in payment services in the region.
When it comes to localization, it takes more than a cursory edit of your existing marketing materials. To truly reach customers in a new region, you should go deeper into cultural understanding.
Conversion and customer experience: capturing revenue in an always-on world
At 93%, the cart abandonment rate for online shopping in the Middle East and Africa region is higher than anywhere else in the world. That means it’s more crucial to focus on customer conversion – turning browsers into buyers – in Saudi Arabia ecommerce than in any other global region.
So why are Saudi shoppers leaving their baskets unpaid for? Our latest report found:
- One in four (24%) of shoppers in Saudi Arabia have abandoned checkouts due to security concerns
- Fewer than one in three (28%) of customers in KSA feel safe saving card data on an ecommerce website
We can see from these stats that checkout security is a big hurdle for consumers. If you want to nudge your customers towards spending, you need to convince them their data is safe.
More than this, though, you must provide a convenient way to buy from your app or website. These days, fewer and fewer consumers want to scroll through pages of options – they want to find what they need and pay for it fast.
With the possibility of false declines and a lack of preferred payment options, the payment page can contribute to conversion (or cart abandonment) more than you think.
Payment methods proliferate
It’s no surprise that digitalization is taking over everyday shopping. Linked to this trend is the reality that the number of different payment methods is increasing.
According to our research:
- Saudi Arabia has seen a 64% drop in the use of cash on delivery for goods or services bought online.
- Most preferred payment methods in KSA are: global digital wallets, such as Apple Pay (36%), Mada (22%), credit card (18%), STC Pay (12%), debit card (8%), BNPL (5%) and crypto wallets (1%).
- Nearly two in three (64%) shoppers in Saudi Arabia agree that “the safety of my online payments depends on which payment method I use (e.g. card, digital wallet, bank transfer, etc.)”
“The expectations of customers are through the roof in terms of what they expect at checkout,” Muath explained. “The expectation is that I'm going to come to your store and you better be available to serve me with various payment methods. It's not just having the basic credit card or basic debit card options that we used to think was the dream scenario just four years ago.”
He observed that Apple Pay – which was launched in Saudi Arabia in 2019 – was a catalyst for consumers’ desire for more digital payment options. Following in its footsteps are Samsung Pay, launched December 2024, and Google Pay, which is set to launch in Saudi Arabia this year.
Additionally, Muath has seen more demand for buy now, pay later (BNPL) choices at checkout. Beyond the major players Tabby and Tamara, different local BNPL players are emerging: Madfu, EMKAN, MIS Pay, which he believes offer a more customized experience for shoppers.
Exceed expectations and set yourself up for success
Coming into Saudi Arabia means you’re facing a tech-savvy consumer base. This is the most important takeaway. It means you cannot assume you already know what your customers want, without further research into exactly who they are and how they shop. When trust is such a valuable piece of the puzzle, you should focus on building this through every interaction point a customer may have with your brand.
The checkout page is the make-or-break moment of earning revenue – or losing the sale. That’s why it’s so important to focus on the trustworthiness of this final stage in the buying journey.
The key elements to earning customer trust are:
- Ensuring a secure payment process
- Offering the right mix of payment methods
- Providing a smooth digital shopping experience with the right amount of information
There’s a lot to be excited about in this market. Partners such as Checkout.com can help you bridge the knowledge and technology gaps you may have. Check out our latest report on digital commerce in MENA to learn more.
