New Year festivities are in full swing in the highly globalized metropolis of Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), with people celebrating in various ways, including gifting online gold. 

O Gold, the UAE's first mobile app that allows investors to hold fractional gold, has launched a new feature where users can now gift gold from their mobile phones.

Aly Abdo, chief operating officer of O Gold, said rising gold prices mean more people should have gold, and many investors are entering the market. As an app that is almost one year old, it already has 800,000 users, which is about 8 percent of the population in the UAE.

O Gold is also planning to launch direct payment with gold soon, to help boost liquidity for those who own gold, aiming to help people hedge against inflation and currency devaluation.

Surging gold prices have influenced not only online investors but also the offline retail market.

As gold jewelry plays an important role in the daily life of residents in the UAE, skyrocketing prices have put more pressure on buyers. To counter the effect, local retailers have rolled out all kinds of measures.

"When gold prices rose, we adjusted our strategy, reducing the weight of our gold jewelry to attract more customers," says Muhammed Abdul Qadir, marketing manager of Al Haseena Jewellery, "In fact, this strategy worked."

Besides reducing the weight of jewelry, retailers offer customers enhanced installment terms to reduce buyers' pressure. Thanks to all these efforts, the retailer's weekly revenue was able to match last year's, despite a smaller volume of gold being traded.

The price of gold rose by over 70 percent in 2025. 24K gold was priced at 318 dirhams ($86.6) per gram on January 1, 2025, but went up as high as 540 dirhams by the end of the year.