Select Market

A supermarket that takes a stablecoin at the till is rare enough that it is worth being precise about what kind of stablecoin, and what kind of till.

What this actually is

AE Coin is a dirham-pegged payment token licensed by the Central Bank of the UAE and issued by AED Stablecoin LLC. You hold it in the AEC Wallet, an app from Al Maryah Community Bank, and you pay by scanning a QR code at the checkout. The bank’s own FAQ says the wallet has no transaction fees and that the balance can be redeemed back to dirhams in a linked account.

So this is not USDC at a supermarket. It is a regulated, local-currency token doing what a debit card does, on a rail the regulator built. If you hold dollar stablecoins there is nothing here for you; if you are a UAE resident with an Mbank account, it is a way to pay for groceries from a blockchain balance with no fee on your side.

Who can use it

UAE residents aged 18 or over, with an Mbank account, in store. Those are Mbank’s conditions, not ours, and they follow from the licence: the identity check happens once, at wallet sign-up, which is why the till itself needs nothing but a scan. Visitors cannot open the wallet. Online orders on selectmarket.ae do not offer it.

Why it is on a directory about spending stablecoins

Because it answers the question this site exists for in a way almost nothing else does. Most of the directory is online: hosting, gift cards, flights, software. The food category was two convenience chains reached through a US wallet network, and everything else was a card that buys food. Select Market is a grocery aisle.

It also shows the other model. Everywhere else here, a stablecoin reaches a merchant through a crypto gateway the merchant chose. In the UAE the central bank licensed the token, a bank built the wallet, and merchants plugged in — Air Arabia first, then a supermarket, hotels, a taxi firm, a florist. Whether that model spreads is an open question; that it works at a checkout in Abu Dhabi is not.

What we could not confirm

Anything from the merchant’s own domain. Select Market’s site does not mention AE Coin, and the listing rests on the issuing bank’s merchant page and a launch announcement in which the supermarket’s general manager is quoted. That is a licensed bank’s word plus the merchant’s, which is why it is listed — and it is not the merchant’s own payment page, which is why the status is “may vary” and the record is explicit about being in-store only.

Related

Air Arabia is the other AE Coin merchant here with its own announcement. Dusit Thani and Southern Sun Abu Dhabi take the same wallet at the front desk. The AE Coin hub has the full list and the regulatory background, and the United Arab Emirates page covers the wider picture.