Deema is a Kuwaiti buy now pay later service, licensed by the Central Bank of Kuwait, Sharia compliant, and powered by Tap Payments. Adding it to your checkout lets a shopper split a purchase into instalments while Deema pays you and carries the collection. The integration work is 5 to 13 hours at 10 KWD per hour.
The problem it solves
A customer puts a 180 KWD item in the cart, sees the total, and leaves. Nothing is wrong with your site. The price is simply more than they want to pay in one go this month. That customer is not lost, they are postponed, and most of them never come back.
Instalment payments answer that objection at the moment it appears. The shopper pays over time, you are paid by the provider, and the provider charges you a merchant fee for taking on the risk and the collection. Because the fee comes out of a sale you would otherwise not have made, the maths works best on higher basket values: furniture, electronics, appliances, treatment packages and travel.
Deema matters locally because it was built for the Kuwaiti market. It is licensed by the Central Bank of Kuwait, structured to be Sharia compliant, runs on Tap Payments, and counts Jazeera Airways among its partners. For a Kuwaiti shopper who has seen it before, it is a familiar name at checkout rather than a foreign one.
What you get
- Deema added beside KNET and cards, where shoppers on a phone will actually see it.
- An instalment message on product and cart pages in correct Arabic and English, so the option appears before the total does.
- Order status updated the moment Deema approves or declines, so no paid order sits marked unpaid.
- Rules for when Deema shows: minimum basket value, category or specific products.
- Refunds and cancellations from your own admin screen, with partial refunds tested.
- A daily report matching Deema’s payouts to your orders, so your accountant is not comparing two exports by hand.
- Test purchases run end to end, including a declined application, before go live.
How we work
- Free first hour. An engineer looks at your current checkout and your average basket, and tells you honestly whether instalments will move anything for your product mix. If they will not, we say so.
- Your Deema account. Deema approves merchants itself. We tell you exactly which company documents to prepare so the application is not sent back, and we work through the technical setup while their review runs.
- Test environment first. We connect your store to Deema’s test setup and run real scenarios: approved, declined, abandoned halfway, and refunded.
- Checkout and product pages. We place the option, write the Arabic and English wording, and set the rules for which baskets see it.
- Refunds and reporting. Your staff get one screen for refunds and one daily report that reconciles payouts against orders.
- Go live and watch. We switch to live mode, run a real purchase, then watch the first week of orders and fix anything the live traffic exposes.
Cost and timeline
| Part of the work | Hours | Cost at 10 KWD/hour |
|---|---|---|
| Account setup support and test access | 1 | 10 KWD |
| Checkout placement and payment flow | 3 | 30 KWD |
| Order status updates and failure handling | 2 | 20 KWD |
| Product page instalment message, Arabic and English | 1 | 10 KWD |
| Refunds and reconciliation report | 2 | 20 KWD |
| Live testing and launch | 1 | 10 KWD |
| Typical total | 5 to 13 | 50 to 130 KWD |
Simple stores on a common platform sit near the bottom of that range. A custom built checkout, a mobile app, or a store that also needs its order and stock logic touched sits near the top.
Where Deema sits next to KNET and cards
Instalments are an addition, never a replacement. KNET is still how most Kuwaiti customers pay online, so a KNET integration or a gateway that bundles it stays the backbone of your checkout, with cards through MyFatoorah for visitors from outside Kuwait. Our payment gateway integration practice covers the whole checkout, and the gateway comparison guide explains what each route costs you per transaction.
Weighing instalment providers rather than gateways? The sibling pages on Tabby and Taly cover those two. Running more than one is normal, and each needs its own approval.
Pitfalls to avoid
- Turning it on everywhere. An instalment banner on a 4 KWD item makes a shop look desperate. Set a minimum basket value.
- Forgetting the declined case. A shopper whose application is refused must land back in a working cart with KNET still available, not on an error page.
- Leaving the order unpaid in your admin. If the status update is not wired properly, staff cancel orders that were paid. This is the single most common fault we are called in to fix.
- Untranslated wording. An Arabic checkout with an English instalment box reads as a bolt-on and gets ignored.
- Assuming approval is instant. Deema decides who it onboards and on what terms. Start that conversation before you plan a campaign around the launch.
Bring your checkout to a free first consultation and we will tell you what the work involves before you commit to anything.