Kuwait Electronic Payments Reach 37.6 Billion Dinars in the First Eight Months of 2026
Electronic payment transactions by cards and by the Wamd instant payment service, inside and outside Kuwait, totalled 37,606.2 million dinars in the first eight months of 2026, on our calculation from the Central Bank of Kuwait monthly tables for August. That is 68.8 percent of the 54,699.4 million dinars the same four channels came to in the whole of 2025, on our calculation, so the eight month run is tracking slightly ahead of last year’s pace rather than past its total.
Wamd is the channel that is growing
Instant payment transfers through Wamd accounted for 7,698.0 million dinars of the eight month figure, or 20.5 percent of the total, against 16.0 percent for the whole of 2025, on our calculation. Point of sale value, the largest channel, came to 12,740.0 million dinars, and cash withdrawals at automated teller machines came to 5,738.9 million dinars, the only channel whose lowest monthly reading of the eight was August.
| Channel | First eight months 2026, million dinars | Full year 2025, million dinars |
|---|---|---|
| Points of sale | 12,740.0 | 19,372.4 |
| Automated teller machines | 5,738.9 | 9,096.4 |
| Payment gateway | 11,429.3 | 17,493.1 |
| Wamd instant payment | 7,698.0 | 8,737.5 |
| Total | 37,606.2 | 54,699.4 |
Central Bank of Kuwait table 27-3, data for August 2026, and the quarterly view of the same table for the 2025 annual row. Card and machine numbers from table 27-4, data for August 2026. All channel sums and totals are on our calculation.
August itself was flat
The four channels together came to 4,828.3 million dinars in August, against 4,853.1 million dinars in July, a fall of 0.51 percent on the month, on our calculation. The monthly average for the first eight months of 2026 is 4,700.8 million dinars, against a 2025 monthly average of 4,558.3 million dinars, a gain of 3.1 percent, on our calculation. Valid cards in issue rose to 8,084.1 thousand at the end of August, while the number of automated teller machines fell to 2,276 from 2,349 at the end of 2025.
Why it matters: the four channels measure different things. Points of sale and the payment gateway capture purchases, automated teller machines capture cash taken out and later spent somewhere else, and Wamd captures transfers between accounts. Added together they describe the flow of retail payments through the banking system, not household consumption, and treating the combined figure as a spending total counts the same dinar more than once.
Outlook: on the current monthly average the four channels would end 2026 near 56.4 billion dinars, on our calculation, a few percent above 2025. The channel mix matters more than the level: Wamd started in June 2024 and its share of the four channels rose in every quarter the central bank publishes, from 12.4 percent in the first quarter of 2025 to 18.9 percent in the first quarter of 2026, on our calculation, and the cash machine network is smaller than it was at the end of 2025 while card numbers rise.
Sources: Central Bank of Kuwait.
