Wassel: Oman's New Digital Platform for Delivery Bikes

Oman's Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology (MTCIT) has launched "Wassel," a new programme to regulate the Sultanate's express delivery sector, unveiling an electronic service on the national "Naql" platform that lets companies register commercial delivery motorcycles, link them to licensed drivers, and track applications entirely online.

🔑 Key Takeaways

• MTCIT launched the Wassel programme on Thursday, September 3, 2026, at the Sultan Qaboos Youth Complex for Culture and Entertainment in Salalah, according to Muscat Daily.
• A new electronic service on the "Naql" digital platform now handles registration of commercial motorcycles, driver linkage, company data verification and application tracking in one unified process.
• The ministry also announced a plan for a gradual shift to electric delivery motorcycles, a project registered on the "Mizan" platform under Oman's Carbon Neutrality Centre to measure emissions cuts, as reported by Wahj Al Khaleej.
• Over the past year, the sector restructuring has supported more than 40 SMEs and created over 900 job opportunities for Omanis, according to Muscat Daily.
• The digital registration requirement builds on rules MTCIT introduced in late 2025 requiring delivery firms to be licensed by the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) and to register vehicles and drivers on Naql, as Times of Oman previously reported.

🛵 What Changed: Delivery Bikes Get Their Own Digital Lane

Anyone who has ordered food or a parcel in Muscat or Salalah has seen the boom in motorcycle couriers weaving through traffic. Until now, bringing that fleet under proper regulatory control meant paperwork spread across companies, insurers and traffic authorities. Wassel changes that by moving commercial motorcycle registration directly onto Naql, the government's digital platform for land transport permits and licensing.

According to Muscat Daily, the new service allows delivery companies to register their commercial motorcycles, link each bike to an authorised driver, verify the firm's workforce permits and company data, and monitor the status of every application, consolidating what had been fragmented, largely manual procedures into a single digital workflow.

That matters because Oman's delivery boom has not been trouble-free. As Times of Oman reported when MTCIT first overhauled the sector in late 2025, investigations found many riders working without commercial licences or proper vehicle insurance, often in professions unrelated to transport. The fix required service providers to operate only through TRA-licensed entities and to register every driver and vehicle on Naql, a model built around four monitored components: licensed restaurants, licensed delivery companies, registered drivers and certified vehicles.

Wassel is the next stage of that same push, extending the digital paper trail specifically to the commercial motorcycles that dominate last-mile delivery.

⚡ Next Up: Electric Motorcycles and a Carbon Ledger

Alongside the digital registration service, MTCIT used the Salalah event to announce a gradual transition plan to electric delivery motorcycles. Thuraya bint Habib Al Wahaibi of the Oman Logistics Centre's Zero Neutrality team outlined the plan, which the ministry expects to cut emissions, energy costs and maintenance expenses while improving fleet efficiency, according to Muscat Daily.

Notably, Wahj Al Khaleej reported that the project has been registered on "Mizan," the measurement platform run by Oman's Carbon Neutrality Centre, so that emissions reductions from the switch to electric bikes can be tracked and used to guide future phases of the rollout. No firm date for full electrification was given, but tying the initiative to Mizan gives regulators a data trail to hold the transition accountable, an approach consistent with how Oman has increasingly paired new services with the data platforms needed to measure them.

📊 A Sector Built on Digital Registration

The figures MTCIT shared in Salalah underline what is at stake economically. The ministry says its restructuring of the sector over the past year has supported more than 40 small and medium enterprises and created over 900 job opportunities for Omanis, according to Muscat Daily. Those jobs sit inside a delivery economy that, as Al Kiyumi put it, has become "a main component of the digital economy and a supporting pillar for e-commerce growth," per Wahj Al Khaleej's account of the launch.

The choice of Salalah as the launch venue is also notable. It is the same governorate where MTCIT recently pushed its national addressing system live in Al Saadah, part of a broader pattern of testing and rolling out digital public-service infrastructure in Dhofar before scaling nationwide.

Wassel also sits inside a wider digitisation drive: Oman has already digitised more than 2,277 government services as part of its Vision 2040 push, according to a recent Oman Vision 2040 analysis, and moving commercial vehicle registration onto Naql extends that same logic to a sector that touches thousands of daily transactions between riders, restaurants and customers.

🚦 What Comes Next

• Delivery companies will need to complete registration of their commercial motorcycle fleets on Naql to remain compliant with TRA licensing rules already in force.
• The Oman Logistics Centre's Zero Neutrality team is expected to publish further phases of the electric transition plan as emissions data from the Mizan platform accumulates.
• Riders and companies not yet registered under the TRA-licensed model face the same compliance gap flagged during the 2025 restructuring, now with a faster digital route to fix it.

🇴🇲 Why This Matters for Oman

Delivery riders are one of the most visible faces of Oman's digital economy, and until now the systems behind them were among the least digitised. By folding commercial motorcycle registration into Naql, MTCIT closes a regulatory gap that had left riders, restaurants and consumers exposed to unlicensed, uninsured operators. It also gives the ministry a live digital record of exactly who is delivering what, on which vehicle, which matters for road safety, consumer protection and Omanisation targets in a sector that has already created hundreds of jobs. Pairing the registration push with an electric-vehicle transition tracked through the Mizan platform shows Oman trying to build sustainability measurement into a public service from day one, rather than bolting it on later, a habit that will matter as the Sultanate works toward Vision 2040's digital economy and emissions goals.