According to IAW, only 4 percent of Internet users in Arab countries made a purchase through the Internet within the span of a year. The most important factors, users and technology suppliers agree, are the newness of E-commerce in the region, lack of a critical mass of Internet users in the Arab world and the inability to ensure secure transactions. The survey showed that Internet users in the Middle East are very wary about sending their credit card numbers through the Internet. Web sites, apparently, make great shop windows but poor cash registers.
Computer related items seem to rank high in their shopping lists.
In fact, apart from airline tickets, computer hardware is the only high cost purchase on the list. The wariness of Internet users in Arab countries about sending their credit card numbers through the Internet concerns mainly online non-secure transactions. Thank for new technologies, cost of Web site security is very reasonable now. Apart from security, technology suppliers cited other reasons for the low level of electronic commerce transactions. Different vendors, however, put more emphasis on some of these reasons more than others depending on the service that they themselves provide.