Arabic, Dirhams and the Checkout: Localisation Decisions That Shape a Dubai Build

Most briefs for Dubai sites treat localisation as a late line item: add Arabic, add a payment gateway, done. It is usually the opposite. Language, address format, currency and checkout methods dictate the data model, the component library and the testing plan, and all four are expensive to retrofit. Here is what each one actually involves.

Arabic is a direction, not a translation

Arabic is the official language of the UAE, and under Federal Law No. 15 of 2020 on Consumer Protection with its executive regulations in Cabinet Decision No. 66 of 2023, e-commerce providers registered here are expected to give consumers sufficient information in Arabic covering the goods and services offered, their specifications, contracting terms, payment terms and warranty terms. For a UAE-registered shop, Arabic is part of the product information, not a roadmap item.

Arabic runs right to left, and a right to left layout mirrors almost everything: navigation, icon direction, progress bars, carousels, form labels, the sidebar. If the CSS was written with margin-left and padding-right everywhere, every one of those values has to be found and reversed. Written with logical properties such as margin-inline-start from the start, one stylesheet serves both directions.

• Set dir="rtl" at the document level per locale rather than patching components one at a time.
• Pick an Arabic face designed for screens. A Latin font with an Arabic fallback bolted on gives mismatched weights and broken line heights.
• Arabic sits taller on the line than Latin type. Fixed-height hero panels break first.
• Numerals are a choice. Western digits are common in UAE commerce, Eastern Arabic digits appear in some government and editorial contexts. Decide once, then apply it to prices, phone numbers and dates.
• Arabic has no italic and no capitalisation, so emphasis your design leans on in English needs another mechanism here.

The languages that are not in the language switcher

Dubai's customer base speaks far more than Arabic and English. Hindi, Urdu, Malayalam, Tagalog, Russian, Farsi and Mandarin are everyday languages here. We would rarely recommend building seven locales, because seven locales means seven content backlogs nobody staffs. What it should change is the English itself: shorter sentences, fewer idioms, no office humour. Plain English is read by more people here than clever English.

Names, addresses and phone numbers break imported form libraries

This is where off-the-shelf checkout components quietly fail. The UAE has no conventional postcode system. Buildings and villa entrances in Dubai carry a ten digit Makani number, useful for delivery and emergency services but not a postal code and not understood by international address validators. Postal mail runs through PO Box numbers. Deliveries run on area names, building names and a mobile.

So a form imported from a US or European template will insist on a mandatory five digit ZIP, and your customers will type 00000 to get past it, which teaches them your form does not know where they live. The version that works here asks for emirate, area or community, building or villa, unit, an optional Makani number, and a mobile number treated as the real delivery identifier.

• Make the postcode field optional, or drop it for the UAE entirely.
• Offer the seven emirates as a defined list rather than a free text state field, and remember that Dubai is one of them, not the country.
• Default the phone input to +971 and accept UAE mobile numbers written with or without the leading zero. People paste them both ways.
• Use a single full name field. Splitting first and last name mangles Arabic names, and it mangles South Indian names that use initials differently.
• Do not run strict transliteration matching. Mohammed, Muhammad and Mohamed are one person in your CRM.

Showing money honestly

Prices are in dirhams, written AED or د.إ, and the dirham is pegged to the US dollar, which is why so many Dubai businesses quote in both. If you show dual currency, make the dirham the price and the second currency the conversion, and never let a live rate change a figure between the product page and the confirmation screen.

VAT is charged at five percent under the Federal Tax Authority regime, and consumers here expect the displayed price to be the price they pay. A B2C page that quotes a figure excluding VAT and adds it at the final step reads as a trick. B2B is about to get more structured: the Ministry of Finance is rolling out an e-invoicing framework on the Peppol network with a UAE specification, phasing in through accredited service providers. If your site issues invoices, ask now how they will reach one.

The checkout methods people here actually expect

Card acceptance through a regional acquirer with 3D Secure enforced is the baseline. What separates a checkout that converts here from one that does not is everything sitting around the card field.

1. 01Apple Pay and Google Pay. High-end phone ownership in the UAE is high and wallet payment is normal. A one tap path removes the address form entirely for repeat buyers.
2. 02Instalments. Buy now pay later from providers such as Tabby and Tamara is mainstream in this market and both have been moving into the Central Bank's regulated licensing framework. The important part is not installing the plugin, it is showing the per month figure on the product page rather than only at checkout.
3. 03Cash on delivery. Still expected by many first time buyers, and dismissing it as outdated costs you those orders. If you take it, build the operational side: confirmation calls, failed delivery handling, a card machine at the door.
4. 04Aani and Jaywan. Al Etihad Payments, a subsidiary of the Central Bank of the UAE, runs Aani for instant account to account transfers by mobile number or QR code, and Jaywan as the national domestic card scheme. Federal entities have begun accepting both. Ask your gateway where it stands on supporting them.

Contact, calls and the working week

WhatsApp messaging is the default business channel in Dubai, and a WhatsApp link will out-convert a contact form for most service businesses. What it will not do is carry a call. Internet calling is licensed in the UAE by the TDRA, and consumer voice and video over apps like WhatsApp generally does not connect on local networks. Licensed apps such as Botim exist for that purpose. A design that leans on a click to video call button is designing for a different country. A toll free 800 number, a callback request and a WhatsApp thread are the realistic options.

Time and dates matter too. The UAE runs on Gulf Standard Time, four hours ahead of UTC, with no daylight saving, so a booking system built around a European office will quietly show the wrong slots. The weekend is Saturday and Sunday, Friday carries the midday prayer and federal working hours end at noon, Sharjah's government moved to a Friday to Sunday weekend, and Dubai has run shorter summer schedules. Public holidays follow the Hijri calendar and are confirmed close to the date, so a hardcoded holiday list in your booking logic will be wrong every year.

One note while you write consent and privacy copy. Federal Decree-Law No. 45 of 2021 on personal data protection has applied since January 2022, but a company inside the DIFC answers instead to DIFC Data Protection Law No. 5 of 2020 and its own Commissioner, and ADGM is a third regime. Name the right one.

The cheapest way to get this wrong is to build the English site and plan Arabic for phase two. Phase two turns into a rebuild, because direction, fonts and address fields are architecture, not skin.

A sensible order to do this in

1. 01Decide the locales before design starts, even if Arabic copy lands months later. Build routing and direction handling on day one.
2. 02Design the checkout and the address model second. They constrain your CRM fields and your delivery integration.
3. 03Confirm the payment stack with the acquirer before the front end is built. Instalment messaging and wallet buttons have placement requirements.
4. 04Write the English for a reader whose first language is not English, and test on a mid-range Android phone on mobile data.

None of this is exotic. It is just specific, and specificity is what a template cannot give you. If you are scoping a UAE build and want a straight answer on what the localisation work adds to the timeline, tell us about the project.