A new report shows the hidden two-year journey behind Saudi Arabia’s 40-second purchases, and why instant buying in the Kingdom is built on years of trust, memory and habit that most marketing plans do not budget for
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – September 21st, 2026 – Platformance, the outcome-based marketing technology company and part of FAST, today released How Saudi Buys in 2026: Seconds to Buy, Years to Earn, a new report examining how Saudi consumers now complete everyday purchases in seconds and what that speed actually costs brands to earn.
Drawing on regulator data, proprietary analysis and behavioural research, the report finds that Saudi Arabia has built one of the fastest everyday purchase journeys in the world. Electronic payments made up 85% of retail transactions in 2025, up from 70% in 2023, across 14.6 billion transactions. Internet penetration stands at 99.6%, and the average Saudi user now spends more than seven hours online a day.
The report identifies five barriers that came down over the past decade to make this speed possible: tap to pay, installment finance, same-hour delivery, in-feed shopping and automatic discounting. Four of the five, the report notes, sit outside the part of the customer journey a marketing team traditionally controls.
But the report’s central finding is that this speed is not the whole story. For considered purchases such as cars, property and healthcare, the journey has lengthened rather than shortened, as more choice and more available information extend the research phase. The report profiles four illustrative Saudi buyers, built from published behaviour data, to show how the same market produces radically different journeys depending on the category and the trust already in place.
The report also highlights a shift already under way in how Saudis search. AI tool adoption among Saudi internet users rose from 21.5% to 45.2% in a single year, with searching for information the leading use case. The report argues that being findable and well described inside AI answers is becoming as important to brands as search engine visibility once was.
“Everyone can see the forty seconds. Almost no one budgets for the two years underneath it,” said Waseem Afzal, Founder and CEO of Platformance. “This report is our attempt to make that invisible work visible, so that marketing leaders across the region can plan for what actually earns speed rather than chase the moment it appears. Saudi Arabia is not just adopting new ways to buy faster. It is showing the rest of the world what a market looks like once every barrier to instant purchase has been removed, and that is a market worth understanding properly.”
“Saudi Arabia has always moved fast, but this report gives us the evidence to explain why, and what it means for how brands should plan,” said Amjad Puliyali, General Manager, Platformance Saudi Arabia. “The market rewards brands that were remembered long before the moment of purchase and punishes those that were not. For marketers here, the question is no longer whether the customer will decide quickly. It is whether your brand has already done the work to be the one they choose when they do.”
How Saudi Buys in 2026: Seconds to Buy, Years to Earn is available now in English and Arabic at www.platformance.io.
