From 1 September the delivery bill in Kuwait has a ceiling, written into a ministerial decision rather than agreed between the platforms.
Decision 109 of 2026, issued on 8 July by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, regulates the platforms and apps that act as intermediaries in displaying, ordering and delivering products to consumers. The compliance period ends at the start of September.
Two ceilings and one figure
Three numbers are the substance of the decision:
- 17 per cent as the upper limit on the total a platform takes from the order value when it handles delivery itself.
- 10 per cent when the merchant handles delivery.
- One dinar as the upper limit on the delivery charge collected from the consumer per order.
Note that the two percentages appear in the published text of the decision, while the one-dinar ceiling was covered more widely in the press.
What else the platform is bound to
The decision does not stop at pricing. It requires platforms to have written contracts setting out every commission, to settle merchants’ dues within fourteen days, not to use unlicensed delivery companies, and not to alter a merchant’s prices without authorisation.
It adds two conditions on visibility: that promotional offers apply evenly across comparable categories of merchant, and that paid placement be disclosed as such.
This decision replaced decision 10 of 2026, which covered only prepared-food delivery; the scope has widened to products generally.
The objecting party
Two days after the decision was announced, more than 250 delivery companies filed a grievance through the committee for small and medium delivery companies, asking for the decision to be suspended pending a study of its economic effect, and saying they were taken by surprise by its issuance without being consulted despite being the main party affected.
Estimates circulating in the coverage put around two thousand delivery companies registered in Kuwait, of which roughly nine hundred are actually operating, and the current cost of a delivery at around 850 fils for distances up to twenty kilometres. Those figures are attributed to sources rather than to an official count.
The tension is plain: a one-dinar ceiling protects the consumer, and may at the same time squeeze a small company whose actual cost is close to that ceiling.
The minister of commerce and industry, Osama Boudi, said the ministry is “not against the electronic platforms”, and that their success matters to it as much as the success of business owners and fair pricing for consumers.
Your rights as a buyer
Alongside the ministerial decision there is the digital commerce decree-law 10 of 2026, issued in February in forty-five articles, parts of which concern the buyer directly:
- A right to withdraw from a purchase within fourteen days.
- An electronic invoice in Arabic.
- Disclosure of paid advertising.
- Registration with the ministry as a condition of practising digital commerce, including anyone selling through social accounts.
- Payment only through service providers licensed by the Central Bank.
Sources differ on exactly when this decree takes effect, between counting six months from publication and tying it to the issuance of the executive regulations.
Photo: a commercial arcade in Mubarakiya souk, Kuwait City — by Diego Delso, delso.photo, CC BY-SA 4.0
Further reading: the Ministry of Commerce and Industry · the Central Bank of Kuwait
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