The super-app is offering 20% cashback on food delivery orders in Abu Dhabi and Al Ain, even if you ordered on a competitor’s platform. It’s a customer-acquisition play dressed up as a customer-loyalty perk.
Careem is testing an unusual growth tactic: bribing people to stay loyal to its wallet, not its app.
From September 1–7, any food delivery order placed in Abu Dhabi or Al Ain (on any platform) qualifies for 20% cashback, capped at AED 30, paid into the customer’s Careem wallet. Ordered on Talabat or Deliveroo instead of Careem? Screenshot the receipt, DM it to @careemuae on Instagram with your registered phone number, and the credit lands within 24 hours. Order on Careem itself, and the cashback applies automatically — no screenshot required.
The strategy, decoded: This isn’t really about food delivery margins. It’s a low-cost, high-visibility play to get rival customers to open a Careem wallet and, ideally, spend that credit on rides, groceries, or payments: the stickier, higher-margin corners of Careem’s “everything app” ambitions. Food delivery is the hook; wallet activation is the actual product.
It’s also a savvy use of owned social over paid media. Routing redemptions through Instagram DMs turns a discount campaign into a data-capture and engagement mechanic — Careem collects phone numbers, screenshots of competitor order behavior, and a direct line to shoppers who weren’t previously its customers, all without a media buy.
“Someone’s dinner from another platform ends up as credit in their Careem wallet,” said Nourhan Farhat, VP of Marketplace Businesses at Careem, in a statement. “And once that credit is there, we’re confident their next order and experience on Careem will speak for itself.”
That’s the bet: cashback gets the wallet installed and funded; product experience does the retention work. It’s a page out of the fintech and ride-hailing playbook — Uber and Careem itself have long used wallet credits to cross-sell services — now aimed squarely at a rival’s delivery customers rather than Careem’s own.
Why it matters for brands and agencies: It’s a reminder that in the region’s super-app economy, the real competitive battleground isn’t a single vertical like food delivery — it’s wallet share and app-open frequency. Expect more platforms to court competitors’ customers directly rather than fighting solely on discovery and delivery speed, and expect social DMs to keep showing up as a redemption channel of choice: cheap, trackable, and built for word-of-mouth screenshotting.
The offer runs city-wide in Abu Dhabi and Al Ain through September 7. Full terms are on @careemuae’s Instagram.
