Air Arabia

Almost every stablecoin payment in this directory is a dollar changing hands on a public blockchain. Air Arabia is the exception on both counts, and it is worth understanding why before deciding whether it is useful to you.

What actually happens

You download the AEC Wallet app, verify your identity, top it up through Al Maryah Community Bank, and select AE Coin at checkout on airarabia.com. The airline is paid in a token pegged one-to-one to the dirham and licensed by the Central Bank of the UAE.

Air Arabia announced this on 26 May 2025 and, as far as we can establish, remains the only airline in the Middle East doing it.

Who this is actually for

People who bank in the UAE. That is the honest scope.

AE Coin is not something you acquire on an international exchange and send from a hardware wallet. It lives inside an identity-verified app funded through a UAE bank account. If you are a tourist holding USDC and hoping to buy a Sharjah–Colombo ticket with it, this record is not the answer — Air Arabia accepts no dollar stablecoin at all. Use Alternative Airlines or Travala, both of which take USDC and cover Air Arabia’s routes as resellers.

If you are a UAE resident, the calculation is different and more interesting. The same coin settles federal government fees, so it is not a single-merchant curiosity; it is a regulated dirham that happens to move on a blockchain.

Why we added a new coin to the directory for this

AE Coin is the first non-dollar, non-euro stablecoin here, and the first licensed by a central bank rather than operating alongside one. That combination is rare enough to document properly, and a listed airline accepting it is the kind of concrete merchant evidence this directory exists to record — as opposed to the announcements-without-checkouts that fill most coverage of this sector.

It is also a useful counterweight to the Emirates listing a few entries away. Both are UAE carriers that turned on digital currency payment. Emirates did it through Crypto.com Pay and named no asset at all, so we claim none. Air Arabia named exactly one, in its own press release, with the mechanism spelled out. Same country, same year, and only one of them told you what you can actually pay with.

What is not documented

Which blockchain AE Coin settles on — neither the airline nor the issuer says, and since payment runs through the wallet app rather than a transfer you initiate, it may not matter to you. And how a refund works: Air Arabia’s fare rules govern the ticket, but nobody documents whether a cancelled booking returns AE Coin, dirhams, or a credit. Worth asking before buying a flexible fare.