Paying with a face or a palm: the UAE Central Bank launches the region’s first biometric payments pilot

The UAE Central Bank has launched the region's first biometric payments pilot — paying by face or palm. This is not a standalone consumer feature but infrastructure intended in time for residents, expats and visitors alike.

How it is designed

The logic is simple: a single biometric profile is linked to payment instruments and documents — Emirates ID, bank cards. A person then uses one identifier everywhere: paying in a shop, passing airport e-gates, accessing government services.

• For residents and expats this could become the default mode of everyday payment.
• For tourists — optional registration for a trip: payment at airports, hotels and malls.

An identity-based payments market is taking shape, where the identifier is the person rather than a carrier — a card or a phone.

How it fits the wider agenda

The pilot sits alongside the Cashless Dubai strategy (90% of transactions cashless by end-2026), crypto acceptance in retail and e-invoicing for business. The common direction is moving settlements into an environment where a transaction is tied to a verifiable identity.

What follows for a property owner

There is no direct link to apartment prices, and stretching for one would be dishonest. But two practical consequences exist.

First, tenant verifiability. The more tightly a person's payment history attaches to their identifier, the easier it is for a landlord to assess solvency. In a country where a large share of tenants are newcomers with no local credit history, that is a real problem this infrastructure gradually solves.

Second, convenience for non-residents. Part of the difficulty of owning property abroad is mundane: paying bills, utilities and community fees from another country. Every step towards a single digital identifier reduces that friction.

Based on UAE Central Bank announcements.