Telr Review

Telr is a Dubai-based online payment gateway for small and mid-size merchants in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, with tailored-price service in Bahrain and Jordan. It says it was established in 2014. In March 2025 it announced a Retail Payment Services licence from the Central Bank of the UAE. In the UAE it signs merchants up under its own agreement and pays out their funds, so it works as a payment facilitator. As of October 2026 its UAE price table has four tiers set by monthly sales. Under AED 10,000 a month you pay a flat AED 249 and no listed per-transaction fee. Above that, rates run from 2.45% + AED 1 down to 2.25% + AED 0.50, with monthly fees falling from AED 199 to zero. International cards add 0.50%. Everything is subject to 5% VAT. Saudi plans are priced in riyals, from 3% + SAR 1 on credit cards and 1% on mada, plus 15% VAT, and run through partner banks. The product covers hosted checkout, payment links, invoices, QR codes, Apple Pay, Google Pay, mada, STC Pay and Tabby instalments. Indian payments firm Cashfree Payments put $15 million into Telr in 2021, which Cashfree says made it one of Telr's largest shareholders; one Indian outlet reported it as a majority stake. There is no fixed term, but you must give a month's notice to leave, and Telr can hold a reserve for at least seven months after you close. Public reviews are few and negative.

Estimated annual cost at three realistic processing volumes, using Telr’s published online rate plus monthly fees. Real costs vary with average transaction size, chargeback rate, and any negotiated terms.

What Telr is

Telr is an online payment gateway run from Dubai Digital Park in Dubai. It serves small and mid-size merchants in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, and it also takes merchants in Bahrain and Jordan on custom pricing. It sells online acceptance only: a hosted checkout, APIs and shopping-cart plugins, plus payment links, invoices and QR codes for merchants who sell through social media or on delivery. It does not sell card terminals. Telr says it supports payments in more than 120 currencies and 30 languages. It also says it was the first company in the Middle East and North Africa to hold both PCI DSS Level 1 and NESA certification. We have not verified that 'first' claim.

Telr gives 2014 as the year it was established, and a 2014 speaker page for the Webit conference lists Elias Ghanem as its CEO and co-founder. A 2016 Entrepreneur Middle East profile says Ghanem stepped back to chairman just over a year after founding the company and that he set out to spend 2015 coaching other businesses, which suggests the company started in 2013. The sources do not settle the year, so we use Telr's own. Khalil Alami now leads the company. Telr's press releases, from the 2021 Cashfree announcement onward, describe him as founder and CEO. The merchant agreement is with Innovate Technologies FZCO, a UAE-registered company, and the website copyright is in the name of Telr PTE LTD. In November 2021 Cashfree Payments, an Indian payments company backed by State Bank of India, announced a $15 million equity investment in Telr. Cashfree's own release says the deal made it one of Telr's largest shareholders, while Business Today reported it as a majority stake that made Cashfree the single largest shareholder. Neither side has published the percentage, so we describe Cashfree as a major shareholder rather than Telr's owner. We found no later sale or rebrand: Telr was still trading under its own name in October 2026, announcing Google Pay in May 2026 and a MoneyHash orchestration partnership in September 2026.

Why we list Telr as a payment facilitator

Telr's terms describe two models. Under the aggregation model, which the terms define as operating in the UAE, the merchant signs Telr's merchant agreement. Telr onboards and screens the merchant, sets the price, takes the fees, holds reserves and pays the net proceeds into the merchant's bank account. Behind it, acquiring banks connect the payments to the card schemes. That is how a payment facilitator works, and in March 2025 Telr announced that the Central Bank of the UAE had granted it a Retail Payment Services licence. We could not confirm on the Central Bank's register which Telr company holds it. The licence announcement said it would let Telr expand its merchant acquiring and payment aggregation in the UAE. Under the direct model, the acquiring bank's own terms govern onboarding, risk, settlement and reserves, and Telr acts more like a gateway. This is how its Saudi plans appear to work: the Saudi price table says bank set-up and monthly fees may differ according to the bank, and Telr describes its Saudi status as a certified Payment Technical Service Provider rather than an acquirer. We classify Telr by its core UAE small-business offering, which is a payment facilitator. Saudi merchants should expect a contract with a partner bank as well.

What it costs in the UAE

• Startup, AED 0 to 9,999 a month in sales: AED 249 a month, with the transaction fee listed as 0% + AED 0, as of October 2026.
• Entry, AED 10,000 to 24,999: AED 199 a month plus 2.45% + AED 1 per transaction.
• Small, AED 25,000 to 49,999: AED 99 a month plus 2.35% + AED 0.50.
• Medium, AED 50,000 and over: no monthly fee, 2.25% + AED 0.50.
• International cards: an extra 0.50% on Entry, Small and Medium.
• All fees and charges are subject to 5% VAT. A valid trade licence is required. Above AED 500,000 a month, Telr quotes a custom plan.

These prices replaced an earlier table that ran at least from January to May 2026. Under that table, Entry was AED 349 a month flat for up to AED 20,000, Small AED 149 a month plus 2.69% + AED 1, and Medium AED 99 a month plus 2.49% + AED 0.50. The new Small and Medium plans are cheaper than the old ones. The flat-fee band has shrunk, though: a merchant selling AED 10,000 to 20,000 a month used to pay AED 349 flat and now pays the Entry plan's monthly fee plus per-transaction fees. As an illustration, take a merchant selling AED 30,000 a month in 150 domestic card payments of AED 200. On the Small plan it would pay AED 705 in percentage fees, AED 75 in fixed fees and AED 99 a month, a total of AED 879, or about 2.9% of sales. With 5% VAT that becomes about AED 923, or 3.1%. The structure has a sharp step at AED 10,000. A merchant selling AED 9,999 pays AED 249. One selling AED 10,000 in 50 payments of AED 200 would pay AED 245 + AED 50 + AED 199, or AED 494, before VAT, which is about twice as much. Telr does not explain how a merchant moves between tiers, so ask in writing. The fixed fee also weighs on small baskets: on an AED 50 payment, the Entry plan's AED 1 adds 2 percentage points.

What it costs in Saudi Arabia

Telr's Saudi price table, as of October 2026, has three plans. Startup covers SAR 0 to 30,000 a month at SAR 99 a month plus 3% + SAR 1 on credit cards. SME covers SAR 30,001 to 80,000 at SAR 179 a month plus 2.75% + SAR 1. SME Plus covers SAR 80,001 to 300,000 at SAR 259 a month plus 2.60% + SAR 1. On every plan, mada debit cards cost 1%, STC Pay 0.90% and urpay cards 0.80%. All fees are subject to 15% VAT, and bank set-up and monthly fees may differ according to the bank. Above SAR 300,000 a month, Telr quotes a custom plan. The site is not fully consistent. The UAE version of the page lists the SME plan at SAR 79 a month in its summary table and SAR 179 in its plan cards, and the Saudi version shows some UAE dirham figures in one of its tables and calls the first plan Entry rather than Startup. We use the figures the Saudi page lists in its plan cards; confirm them in your proposal. Because mada carries a flat 1% with no fixed fee, a Saudi merchant whose customers mostly pay with mada will pay much less than the credit card rate suggests.

Fees, contract and terms

The merchant terms, last updated 1 September 2026, say your fees are set in a Merchant Onboarding Form. Telr starts charging from the day it tells you the account is approved for live cards, which can be before you take your first sale. It debits monthly fees from your Telr balance or, if the balance is short, from a business card you register, and you waive the right to dispute those card charges. Telr can amend fees because of changes in its suppliers' costs, and the terms say amended fees apply immediately once it emails you. Fees are quoted before VAT, and transaction fees are not refunded when a payment is refunded or charged back. There is no fixed term: you can leave on one month's written notice to cancellation@telr.com. Telr's published list of restricted businesses says tobacco and e-cigarette merchants pay an extra fee, but the fee is not shown. The terms also say American Express may move a merchant above an Amex volume threshold to a direct Amex agreement with its own pricing.

Payouts, reserves and holds

Telr does not publish a standard payout time. The terms say the payout schedule is shown in the dashboard and Telr may require a holding period before the first settlement. Telr can change the schedule or suspend settlement where disputes, refunds or reversals are pending or excessive. Telr's marketing promises 'rapid, regular settlement' and localised settlement without giving a number of days. The reserve terms are strict. Telr can impose a rolling reserve whenever it judges your risk higher than normal, and the terms say the reserve will in many cases be the entire amount of your charges. Its right to hold reserves lasts at least seven months after you leave, and it can set reserves against anything you owe. If you close your account with money still owed to you, you have 90 calendar days to ask for it in writing, or Telr may keep it. Marketplace split payouts are slower: Telr aims to settle split instructions within seven business days, only in dirhams to UAE bank accounts, with a minimum of AED 50.

Features

Telr says every feature is included in every plan. Those features include unlimited payment links, branded invoices, QR codes, recurring payments, convenience fees, anti-fraud screening, multi-currency processing and split payments for marketplaces. Wallet and local payment options are broad for the region. They include Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and, since May 2026, Google Pay, as well as PayPal, UnionPay and JCB, and in Saudi Arabia mada, STC Pay, urpay and SADAD. Customers can pay in four interest-free instalments through Tabby, under Tabby's own terms. Telr Finance arranges revenue-based funding through partner lenders for UAE merchants trading at least six months with AED 50,000 or more in monthly revenue. Integration is through a hosted payment page, APIs, mobile SDKs and plugins for Shopify, Magento, OpenCart and others. Because Telr's hosted page is PCI DSS v4.0 Level 1 certified, merchants using it do not need their own PCI DSS certification. To onboard, you need a trade licence, owners' passports and visas, ownership documents and three months of bank statements or a bank letter.

Reputation and complaints

Telr's public review base is very thin. On 21 October 2026 its unclaimed Trustpilot profile showed five reviews, all one-star, posted between March 2023 and November 2025, with a displayed TrustScore of 2.5. The score is higher than an all-one-star distribution would suggest; Trustpilot's scoring pulls profiles with few reviews toward a neutral starting value. The reviews describe settlement funds held pending verification, accounts declined after onboarding began, monthly fees charged before going live, and features promised in sales calls, such as multi-currency and recurring billing, that the merchant says were not delivered. Five reviews are too few to measure a company of Telr's size, but they agree with the terms on one point: Telr has wide powers to hold funds. In its favour, Telr has run under the same name for more than a decade, holds a Central Bank of the UAE licence, has partnerships with Saudi Awwal Bank and Bank AlJazira, and says it was named in the Forbes Middle East Fintech 50. Our searches found no lawsuit or regulatory enforcement action naming Telr.

Who should use Telr

Telr suits a UAE or Saudi small business with a trade licence that sells online or through social media and wants one locally licensed provider for cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay and regional methods such as mada and STC Pay, at a price it can read before it calls sales. Saudi merchants with heavy mada volume benefit most from the published pricing. Before signing, get in writing which plan you will be on, how and when you move between tiers, your payout schedule and any reserve. Watch the AED 10,000 step closely. Merchants in Telr's restricted or prohibited lines, those needing in-store terminals, and those processing well above AED 500,000 a month should look at their options more widely.