  Heavy quarks, produced at early stages of heavy-ion collisions, are an
excellent probe of the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) also created in these
collisions. Electrons from open heavy-flavor hadron decays (HFE) are good
proxies for heavy quarks, and have been measured extensively in the last two
decades to study QGP properties. These measurements are traditionally carried
out by subtracting all known background sources from the inclusive electron
sample. More recently, a significant enhancement of $e^+e^-$ pair production at
very low transverse momenta was observed in peripheral heavy-ion collisions.
The production characteristics is consistent with coherent photon-photon
interactions, which should also constitute a background source to the HFE
measurements. In this article, we provide theoretical predictions for the
contribution of coherent electron production to HFE as a function of transverse
momentum, centrality and collision energy in Au+Au and Pb+Pb collisions.
