Emirates has launched Crypto.com Pay as a payment option for flight bookings, the airline announced. The feature is available to eligible UAE residents booking flights priced and settled in UAE dirhams, and requires an active, verified Crypto.com account.

How the payment works

On the Emirates app:

  • Select Crypto.com Pay at checkout.
  • Get redirected to the Crypto.com app to authorise payment from a Crypto.com wallet.
  • Return to the Emirates app once payment is authorised.
  • Receive the booking confirmation and e-ticket.

On emirates.com:

  • Select Crypto.com Pay at checkout.
  • Scan a QR code shown on the booking page.
  • Approve the transaction inside the Crypto.com app.
  • See the booking confirmation and e-ticket appear on screen.

Adnan Kazim, Emirates’ deputy president and chief commercial officer, said the launch “delivers on our commitment to expanding customer choice in how they pay for travel.”

Eric Anziani
Eric Anziani

Eric Anziani, Crypto.com’s president and chief operating officer, called the integration “a milestone for Crypto.com and our Pay feature.”

A year in the making

The launch follows a memorandum of understanding the two companies signed in July 2025 to explore integrating Crypto.com Pay into Emirates’ payment systems, signed by Kazim and Mohammed Al Hakim, president of Crypto.com’s UAE operations. Just over a year passed between that agreement and Wednesday’s live launch, a comparatively fast turnaround for a national carrier integrating a new payment rail into its booking systems.

Not the first, but a different kind of first

Several outlets have described Emirates as the first UAE or Gulf airline to accept cryptocurrency for ticket payments. That framing overlooks Air Arabia, the Sharjah-based low-cost carrier, which began accepting AE Coin, a Central Bank of the UAE-regulated dirham-pegged stablecoin, for bookings in May 2025, more than a year before Emirates’ launch, through a partnership with Al Maryah Community Bank, as The National reported at the time.

The distinction that holds up is narrower: Emirates is the first major, full-service Gulf carrier to accept payment through a global crypto exchange’s payment product, drawing on a customer’s existing wallet balance, rather than a single bank’s dirham-pegged stablecoin processed through one regulated partner. Neither company has disclosed booking volumes or adoption figures since either launch.