ADIB Opens 24/7 Real-Time Transfers to Egypt Through Visa Direct

Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates — Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank (ADIB) has begun sending Egyptian pound payments to eligible bank accounts in Egypt in real time, 24 hours a day, and says it is the first lender in the UAE to offer that service over Visa Direct, the card network's money movement platform.

Customers set up a transfer in the ADIB Mobile App and the money lands in the recipient's eligible Egyptian account in real time, the bank said, even after normal banking hours and on weekends and public holidays.

ADIB calls the Egypt corridor a key stage in rolling out Remit, the cross-border transfer product it built with Visa. Remit already connected the bank's customers to Visa Direct, which ADIB says can reach more than 18 billion eligible cards, accounts and digital wallets around the world. The Egypt service shows that worldwide network being turned into quicker payments tailored to individual corridors, according to the bank.

In ADIB's description, Egypt ranks among the most important destinations for money sent from the UAE, with transfers that help families and pay for daily needs. The bank said the service gives senders more speed, certainty and convenience when paying relatives, friends and other beneficiaries. By pairing its digital banking with the Visa network, it said, payments can be delivered quickly and securely to eligible Egyptian cards, wallets and bank accounts.

Remit dates back to mid-2025. In a July 31, 2025 announcement, ADIB said the Visa Direct-powered service, then branded Remit!, gave its customers a reach of more than 11 billion cards, wallets and accounts, and described itself as the first bank globally to offer that reach. The figure the bank now gives for the same network is more than 18 billion.

Visa research cited at that launch points to the demand behind the product. Its 2025 remittance study found that 95% of surveyed UAE consumers send money abroad at least once a year, and Visa said people in the UAE send money overseas an average of 1.4 times a month. Of those senders, 63% preferred digital transfers made from physical locations, and close to half named safety, privacy and speed as their reasons.

The same study recorded persistent frustrations. High fees and having to visit a physical location to complete a payment were among the complaints most often reported, and more than a third of UAE consumers surveyed said they had faced such problems. Visa also pointed to Visa+, which lets businesses and financial institutions pay someone using a mobile number or email address instead of full account details, and which it said was already live in the UAE, Qatar and Bahrain.

The Egypt launch adds to other digital steps the bank has taken this year. In April, ADIB became the first UAE bank to be licensed as an Open Finance provider under AlTareq, the initiative led by the Central Bank of the UAE, allowing it to act as a Third-Party Provider and pull together customers' data from other institutions with their consent.

ADIB, which was founded in 1997 and trades on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX), reported total assets of approximately $86.6 billion (AED 318 billion) on September 30, 2026. Its nine-month results showed pre-tax profit of approximately $1.74 billion (AED 6.4 billion), up 6%, and gross customer financing up 25% to about $59.4 billion (AED 218 billion), with more than 200,000 new customers opening accounts.

The Abu Dhabi-based bank has one of the UAE's biggest Islamic banking networks and serves retail, corporate, business, private banking and wealth management clients. Outside the UAE it operates in Egypt, Iraq, the United Kingdom and Qatar, and under its Vision 2035 strategy it says it is focusing on sustainable growth, closer customer relationships and digital innovation.

A second real-time route could give ADIB customers more choice on one of the UAE's busiest corridors, and round-the-clock delivery may matter most to people who need money to arrive on a weekend or holiday.