UAE ecommerce and FMCG verticals – aspects to consider for business expansion

Katerina Steinberg, Co-Founder of Expio, delves into the UAE’s online shopping landscape, highlighting the increased relevance of ecommerce for the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) industry. 

Global ecommerce trends – why food and HoReCa matter

Ecommerce today is entering a new phase. Worldwide, online commerce is shifting from generic retail to specialised vertical ecosystems: fintech, travel, last-mile logistics, B2B procurement, and most notably, foodtech. Several global trends drive this transformation, a couple of which are detailed below.

The rise of operationally complex verticals

Consumers expect not only fast delivery but quality, reliability, freshness, and real-time tracking, all of which fundamentally change how ecommerce works in food and HoReCa. Unlike retail, food supply chains depend on factors like strict temperature controls, short shelf life, volatile ingredient pricing, rapid menu changes, and daily ordering patterns. This pushes the sector to adopt advanced procurement technology, predictive forecasting, and integrated digital platforms faster than many other ecommerce verticals.

Digital ecosystems are replacing single-purpose apps

Globally, the trend is towards end-to-end platforms, with ordering, payments, compliance, logistics, and performance analytics coming together in one stack. Cloud kitchens, delivery marketplaces, and B2B supplier portals now operate as mini ecommerce ecosystems, shaping consumer expectations across the entire food value chain.

The UAE’s role in global commerce

The UAE serves as a regional testbed for digital commerce due to several factors:

• high smartphone penetration rates
• government-supported digital infrastructure
• a vibrant hospitality market
• multinational consumer base
• and an import-dependent food supply chain (prompting rapid digitalisation).

This combination makes the UAE one of the world’s most strategically important foodtech markets and a launchpad for GCC expansion, while providing a broader understanding of ecommerce and payments innovation in the region.

The UAE‘s food and HoReCa ecommerce landscape

Fragmented, yet highly efficient supply chain – Experts across the UAE emphasise the same points:

• The country imports nearly all food products.
• Distributors specialise by category (dairy, meat, produce, non-food).
• Each distributor maintains unique supplier relationships and forecasting systems.
• Restaurants often rely on multiple suppliers to hedge against delays, price fluctuations, and stockouts.

 This creates a fragmented, yet high-performance ecosystem, where speed and relationship management matter as much as price. 

Local adaptation over global standardisation – Regulatory, quality, and halal requirements force companies to adapt early:

• The UAE’s municipality rules apply uniquely to dry, chilled, and frozen items.
• Halal certification affects many European and Asian suppliers.
• Shelf-life requirements are stricter than in most European markets.
• Distributors will not onboard brands that cannot meet storage or compliance standards.

Global entrants routinely underestimate the need to localise packaging, documentation, and certifications early on.

Procurement technology and cloud kitchens

The UAE cloud kitchen sector is one of the most digitised in the world. When it comes to the tech that operators employ for their day-to-day activities, we are looking at centralised procurement across all kitchens. This means that all procurement is handled centrally, not by individual kitchens. This approach of centralised buying ensures better margin control, consistency, and vendor oversight.

Moreover, we’re looking at a vertical where automation levels reach up to 80%. Operators use advanced systems such as Oracle, SAP, and Slim4 to automate forecasting, recipe-linked demand planning, purchase order generation, invoice uploads, and inventory movement.

Yet, experts unanimously state that human oversight remains irreplaceable, especially in supplier relationships, negotiation, and niche ingredient sourcing.

Payments and digital commerce in the UAE foodtech sector

The payment layer is where much of the UAE foodtech digitisation becomes visible, both in terms of operational efficiency and merchant adoption. Food and HoReCa ecommerce depends heavily on rapid, secure, and flexible payment flows.

Merchant payment technologies

Merchants operating in these verticals rely on multi-channel payment stacks. We see restaurants, cloud kitchens, and distributors increasingly use:

• in-app payments (linked to branded restaurant networks)
• payment portals integrated with Oracle/SAP
• online ordering/checkout through B2B portals
• card-on-delivery and credit-based invoicing.

In large kitchen networks, purchase orders (POs) and vendor invoices are increasingly uploaded into automated portals, reducing manual finance work and speeding up supplier payments.

Another major step representing the digitisation of B2B food payments comes in the form of digital invoices and automated accounts payable (AP) solutions. One operator described a system where vendors upload invoices and delivery notes to a portal, AP receives them automatically, and manual matching is eliminated.

Payment behaviour and trends

Restaurants and cloud kitchens order daily. Because many UAE kitchens operate with limited storage, they order perishables every 24 hours, making fast invoice generation, credit terms, and consolidated payments critical components of merchant payment behaviour.

Moreover, merchants use multiple suppliers to control risk, which creates complex payment flows and prompts them to face several challenges: from multiple invoices per day and daily reconciliation to split payments and variable pricing due to volatility in dairy and meat categories.

Platforms that simplify invoicing, credit, and payment aggregation can significantly accelerate adoption in this region: addressing merchant needs helps scale your business.

Local vs global payment providers

• Large operators rarely integrate with global payment solutions for procurement or B2B; local integrations are more flexible and cost-effective.
• Pricing sensitivity is extremely high: even a cost difference of a few dirhams affects restaurant margins.
• Global payment service providers (PSPs) rarely match the negotiated, relationship-based pricing achievable with UAE-based vendors.

Global players are often not optimised for the UAE’s B2B complexity, and merchants tend to prefer local PSPs and customised integrations.

Payment-related challenges in the UAE food and HoReCa market

1. Fragmented payment cycles: restaurants purchase from 20 to up to 200 vendors, depending on their size, which results in dozens of invoices and mismatched delivery/payment timelines.
2. Difficulty integrating with large supply chain ERPs: Distributors use services like NetSuite, Slim4, SAP, and Oracle, where integration is rarely standardised. Several experts have noted that foreign teams often underestimate these integration gaps during early planning – that becomes clear only when speaking directly with UAE operators.
3. Price volatility: especially in dairy and meat, where suppliers change pricing monthly based on global indexes.
4. High receivables risk: small restaurants have a high closure rate, making credit terms risky for suppliers.
5. Lack of centralised payment processors for B2B purchases: this is why many operators still rely on manual bank transfers or invoice uploads.

Recommendations for global entrants

Whether you’re a merchant or payment provider, expanding into the UAE requires you to be prepared to address specific market needs. Below are some strategies worth considering for successful business scalability in the region:

• Integrate early with local PSPs and banks – Suppliers, vendors, and cloud kitchens prefer UAE-based payment partners who can support AED settlement, credit line extensions, faster reconciliation, and compliance with local invoicing norms.
• Offer consolidated payments for HoReCa – This dramatically reduces the operational burden on restaurants. A huge opportunity exists for unified invoicing, bundled payments for multiple suppliers, and daily reconciliation flows.
• Build payment features into procurement workflows – Examples include auto-generated invoices matched with POs, delivery-note upload flows, wallet balance for restaurants ordering daily, or supplier rebates and discounts linked to spend volume.
• Provide hybrid payment options – Restaurants still depend on credit terms, bank transfers, and card-on-delivery for urgent orders. Supporting these alongside digital payments improves adoption.
• Align payment systems with UAE regulatory rhythms – High-frequency ordering means your payment system must support multiple daily transactions, real-time updates, fluctuating SKU pricing, and automated payment reminders. If your system is optimised only for weekly/monthly cycles, it will not fit the UAE model. 

Much of this complexity is rarely detailed in public documentation, which is why early conversations with people who manage daily procurement, settlement, and reconciliation flows tend to be so valuable for international teams.

Final Thoughts

The UAE foodtech and HoReCa ecommerce ecosystem is a unique blend of supply chain complexity, strict regulatory requirements, rapid digital transformation, sophisticated procurement technology, and relationship-driven decision-making. 

Companies entering this market must understand both the operational layer (kitchens, distributors, forecasting) and the payment layer (settlement, credit, reconciliation) to avoid common pitfalls and scale effectively.

Expio’s UAE supply-chain, procurement, and HoReCa experts consistently noted that international teams who consult local specialists early move faster, avoid costly rework, and scale more confidently. Many of the issues highlighted in this article were surfaced directly through those expert conversations, a reminder of how different the on-the-ground reality can be from high-level market research.

About the author

Katerina Steinberg is the Co-Founder of Expio. With over 10 years of experience in international economic regulations and global strategy, Katerina has worked on the business and NGO/trade mission side.

 

 

About Expio

Expio is a platform that connects companies expanding abroad with local experts, who provide them with guidance on regulations, market insights and country-specific requirements. More than 500 experts from 46 countries (from Europe to Africa) are already in the base of expio.io.