Saudi consumers put SR16.5 billion through point-of-sale terminals in the week ending October 3, central bank data published Wednesday shows, a rise of 23.1 percent from SR13.4 billion the week before. Transaction counts moved the same way: 273.9 million payments against 243.6 million. The four-week moving average now stands at SR14.2 billion.
The jump itself is seasonal. The week ending October 3 carried the monthly salary cycle, and card spending in the Kingdom tracks the pay calendar with remarkable fidelity: the trough-to-peak swing of more than SR3 billion inside a fortnight is the pay cycle made visible in payments data. What matters is the level. The last comparable salary week, in late August, printed SR15.8 billion. This one came in roughly four percent higher, which is consistent with the 5 to 6 percent annual growth the full August bulletin recorded for point-of-sale spending. At weekly frequency, the trend is intact.
That makes the weekly series worth watching for its own sake. SAMA’s monthly bulletins arrive with a lag of about five weeks; the weekly point-of-sale print is the fastest public read on Saudi household demand that exists. It has also become more representative. Electronic payments reached 85 percent of retail transactions in 2025, past the Vision 2030 target of 70 percent, so the card rails now carry most of what households actually spend. A decade ago a weekly card series would have described a fraction of the consumer economy. Today it describes most of it.
The composition points the same direction. Food and beverage purchases took SR2.98 billion, or 18.1 percent of the week, and restaurants and cafes another SR1.89 billion, or 11.5 percent. Nearly a third of the total sits in everyday consumption rather than durables or one-off purchases. Salary-week spending in the Kingdom is routine life conducted at slightly higher volume, which is what a stable consumer economy looks like in high-frequency data.
Geography is the sharper signal. Riyadh accounted for SR5.62 billion, or 34.1 percent of national card spending, with Jeddah at SR2.1 billion taking 12.9 percent. The capital’s share of consumer spending runs well ahead of its share of population, and the gap is structural rather than cyclical: separate social insurance data published the same day show just over half of all registered employment in the Kingdom now sits in Riyadh. Payrolls concentrate where the services build is, and spending follows payrolls.
The calendar now works in the series’ favor. Riyadh Season opens on October 21, and previous entertainment seasons have been visible in the weekly prints within days of opening. The September monthly bulletin, due in early November, will show whether the cash-to-card migration continued; cash withdrawals fell 5 percent in August while mada e-commerce grew 26 percent, and the month that online spending overtakes cash entirely is now close enough to watch for. Between now and then, the weekly series will do what it does best: report, seven days at a time, whether the Kingdom’s households keep spending through the autumn. The salary weeks of November and December, landing after Riyadh Season opens, will say more than any forecast.