Ministerial Decision No. 32 of 2026, dated 7 April, prohibits any cash transaction above KD 10 when concluding contracts, selling goods or providing services in named activities. As written it is a ban on cash rather than a mandate to accept a particular payment method, though its practical effect is electronic payment.
The activities the decision names
- Health institutes.
- Men’s, women’s and children’s salons.
- Sports clubs.
- Medical pest and rodent control firms.
- Firms importing, exporting or storing public-health pesticides.
What was actually caught
In July 2026 the Ministry of Commerce and Industry recorded 1,398 violations across its inspection campaigns, of which only fifteen concerned the cash prohibition. By comparison there were 212 for not using Arabic, 145 for not displaying prices, and 95 for misleading product information.
The ministry’s July bulletin lists activities broader than the five in the decision, among them domestic-labour recruitment offices; whether the scope was extended by a later decision is not clear.
Photo: a card payment reader at a till. Photo by Brian Katt, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Source: Ministry of Commerce and Industry, via Kuwait Times and Times Kuwait, 2026.
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