Stablecoin adoption in MENA: the numbers

Lukasz Dec

Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

May 18, 2026

The Middle East and North Africa is one of the world's fastest-maturing stablecoin regions, but the headline figures need reading with care, because the same number can mean speculation in one market and payments in the next.

This is our data roundup: the regional volumes, the country breakdown, the corridor and trade flows that stablecoins are increasingly carrying, and - most usefully - the signals that separate real payment adoption from trading noise. Every figure links to its source; where the source is a year-old, we say so.

The regional picture

MENA crypto transaction volume peaked above $60 billion in a single month in December 2024, per Chainalysis's 2025 Geography of Cryptocurrency report, with the region growing roughly a third year-over-year - steady rather than explosive, and slower than APAC or Latin America.
The region splits into four distinct adoption stories, in Chainalysis's framing: Türkiye's speculative volume, the UAE's regulated institutional hub, Israel's crisis-driven surge, and Iran's isolated ecosystem.

The country breakdown

Market	Annual value received (Chainalysis, 2024–25)	Character of the activity
Türkiye	~$200 billion	Regional leader by volume, increasingly speculative — altcoin trading surged while stablecoin volumes fell under tighter 2024–25 rules
UAE	~$53 billion	Regulated hub; growth led by institutional transfers, with merchant-services activity growing fastest in retail-sized transactions — a payments signal
Egypt	~$48 billion	Remittance-heavy market; informal dollar demand
Israel	~$22 billion	Volumes surged after October 2023 as a financial refuge
Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco	Smaller but growing	Diverse drivers; Saudi activity constrained by the absence of a licensing framework

Two caveats the table can't carry. First, "crypto value received" is a broad measure - it captures trading, transfers, and settlement together; it does not isolate stablecoin payments. Second, the report window is mid-2024 to mid-2025, so by the time you read this it is a year old. Directionally reliable; not a live dashboard.

The stablecoin-specific signals

Buried in the broad numbers are the ones that matter for settlement:

UAE stablecoin trading rose sharply as regulation landed. UAE exchanges handled ~$9.8 billion of stablecoin volume in H1 2024, up 55% year-over-year, per Chainalysis figures cited by PwC - the run-up to the PTSR taking effect.
UAE merchant activity is the outlier. Small-retail crypto transactions in the UAE grew ~88% and large-retail ~84% period-over-period - the pattern you'd expect when a licensed dirham stablecoin starts appearing at fuel stations and telecom bill payments.
Türkiye's stablecoin share fell. Its stablecoin trading volume dropped from above $200 million to around $70 million (31-day average) between late 2024 and mid-2025 as activity shifted to altcoins - a reminder that the region's largest market is not its most stablecoin-native.
The dirham now has multiple live, licensed tokens - AE Coin, Zand AED, and DDSC (with additional bank issuers in approval) — though issuers do not yet routinely publish supply figures. When they do, this page will carry them.

The flows underneath: corridors and trade

Stablecoin adoption ultimately tracks the money that needs to move. In MENA, that money is enormous:

Remittances. India received an estimated $129 billion in 2024, the most of any country, and the UAE is its second-largest source, at roughly 18% of inflows — with Egypt, Pakistan, the Philippines and Bangladesh forming the rest of the Gulf's outbound corridor map. The World Bank still puts the global average cost of a $200 transfer above 6%.
Trade. UAE non-oil foreign trade reached AED 3 trillion in 2024, up 14.6%, and non-oil trade with India alone grew 20.5% to AED 240 billion.
Domestic rails. UAE domestic payment systems processed more than AED 20 trillion in transfers in the first ten months of 2025 — the scale any tokenized rail eventually has to interoperate with.

Almost none of these flows move on stablecoin rails yet. That gap - hundreds of billions in annual corridor and trade volume still on correspondent banking - is the addressable market, and it is why regulated settlement infrastructure matters more here than in regions where the flows are smaller.

How to read adoption numbers without fooling yourself

Three tests we apply to every regional statistic - and recommend to anyone building on this market:

Volume or payments? Trading volume inflates fast and deflates faster; merchant and payroll flows grow slowly and stick. Türkiye's $200 billion and the UAE's merchant-services growth are different phenomena wearing the same unit.
Which token, which regulator? Under the PTSR, UAE domestic payments run on licensed dirham tokens while USD stablecoins sit largely on trading venues — so UAE "stablecoin volume" is mostly a trading statistic until dirham-token flow data exists. Elsewhere in the region, USD stablecoin volume often is the payment story.
Float or flow? Non-USD tokens show small supply and high turnover; measuring them by market cap understates adoption. We'll return to this in our non-USD index later this quarter.

Applied honestly, the numbers say this: MENA's stablecoin adoption is real, uneven, and - in the UAE specifically - shifting from trading toward payments under a licensing regime designed to make exactly that shift happen.

Frequently asked questions

Which MENA country has the highest crypto adoption?
By transaction volume, Türkiye (~$200 billion annually per Chainalysis), followed by the UAE (~$53 billion) and Egypt (~$48 billion). By regulatory maturity and institutional activity, the UAE.

How big is stablecoin adoption in the UAE?
UAE exchanges handled roughly $9.8 billion in stablecoin volume in H1 2024 (up 55%), and merchant-services activity has grown fastest since the PTSR took effect. Dirham-token supply figures are not yet routinely published.

Are stablecoins used for remittances in the Middle East?
Increasingly, though most Gulf remittance flow still runs on traditional rails. The UAE is the world's second-largest source of remittances to India; stablecoin rails compress cost and time where both endpoints permit them.

Is MENA crypto growth speculative or real?
Both, by market: Türkiye's growth is driven by speculation, while the UAE's is led by institutional transfers and fast-growing merchant activity under regulation.

Sources

Lukasz Dec

Co-Founder & CEO of Thiqwave. 18 years in fintech and digital assets; led product and UX for First Abu Dhabi Bank's dirham-pegged stablecoin ecosystem. Co-Chair, Infrastructure Committee at the Middle East Stablecoin Association.