UAE gift cards: dirhams, and why the price barely moves

The United Arab Emirates is the busiest Middle Eastern region we sell, and it has one quiet advantage: the dirham is pegged to the US dollar. The rate doesn't wander, so what an AED 100 card costs this month is roughly what it cost last month.

The shelf

Google Play comes in 23 sizes, AED 5 to AED 1,000, which is more steps of one card than anywhere else we sell. PlayStation Store runs AED 10 to AED 200, Xbox is AED 59, 99 and 199, and iTunes covers AED 50, 100, 250 and 500. Netflix is AED 100 and AED 500, Roblox AED 20 to AED 500.

Amazon.ae, two ways

There's a fixed card from AED 25 to AED 1,000, and a range card that takes any amount between AED 25 and AED 5,000. The range card is the one for a precise total rather than the nearest size up.

Those 23 Google Play sizes, in practice

The ladder starts AED 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and then climbs in bigger steps, which sounds faintly ridiculous until you need it. Say a subscription takes AED 37 a month. On most shelves you'd buy AED 50 and leave AED 13 sitting there. Here you buy the AED 30 and the AED 7 and get on with your evening.

It also makes small purchases worth doing properly. A single in-app purchase no longer needs a card five times its size.

Beyond gaming

Deliveroo from AED 25, and the Gulf's two reliable gift answers, Swarovski and L'Occitane, both AED 300 to AED 1,000. They're on the UAE shopping shelf.

Which accounts this fits

Emirati accounts, which are more common than you'd think among people who've worked in the Gulf or whose Apple ID was created there. An Apple ID's country is tied to its payment details and its balance, so if yours is Emirati, a dirham iTunes card is the straightforward way to keep it fed.

For PlayStation, check rather than assume. Find your PlayStation account region takes two minutes, and the country can't be changed afterwards.

If a size is sold out

Buy two smaller ones. Balances stack, so AED 100 and AED 50 make AED 150 in the same wallet. What you shouldn't do is substitute a card from another country, because once a code has been revealed there's no way back. The Loot Guarantee covers genuine failures, not a code spent on the wrong store.