Carte CIB / SATIMAlgeria's interbank card scheme, operated by SATIM, which also runs the national e-commerce gateway. Algeria is almost closed to international schemes: without CIB or Edahabia, a merchant cannot accept domestic payments.SATIM ((Société d'Automatisation des Transactions Interbancaires et de Monétique), for GIE Monétique and Algerian banks) · since 19974,244,542 CIB cards in circulation in 2025; 27,123,648 online transactions authenticated by card (up 38%); online transactions up 179%, POS payments ×2, and mobile payments up 29% in 2025 (GIE Monétique annual report, 2026). ⚠️ One press source cites “more than 12 million CIB and Dahabia cards” for 2025, which does not match the official total of 21,899,581 cards. Use the official total.
Global registry · Africa & Middle East · North Africa
Algeria Payment systems
4 systems listed.
This country doesn’t have a written market analysis yet: e-commerce shares, regulator, and key players are still to be documented. The systems below, however, are verified.
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Payments in East AfricaPayments in Portuguese-speaking and southern AfricaMobile money in AfricaPayments in West and Southern AfricaPayments in the CEMAC zonePayments in the Gulf and the Middle EastAccepting payments in AfricaAccepting payments in Egypt and the MaghrebAccepting payments in the GulfCollecting payments in Kenya and East AfricaCollecting payments in Nigeria and West AfricaPayments in Africa: the continent that reinvented mobile money
Card schemes
EdahabiaAlgeria's real dominant scheme is not a bank scheme but a POSTAL one. Algérie Poste issues four times as many cards as all the banks combined, because it holds the mass-market CCP (postal checking) accounts. CIB ↔ Edahabia interoperability was formalized in an agreement between Algérie Poste, SATIM, and GIE Monétique. A prime example of a dominant domestic scheme that no one documents outside the country.Algérie Poste · since 201617,655,039 cards in circulation in 2025, out of a national total of 21,899,581 payment cards (GIE Monétique annual report, 2026), or more than 80% of all cards in Algeria.
Clearing and settlement
ATCI (Algérie Télécompensation Interbancaire)Algeria’s bulk electronic clearing system: first standardized checks, then gradually other standardized instruments (credit transfers, direct debits, bills of exchange). Its net balances settle at the end of the day in ARTS, and a settlement failure triggers the industry-wide default procedure.Centre de Pré-Compensation Interbancaire (body set up under the auspices of the Banque d’Algérie (the central bank))
Other
ARTS (Algeria Real Time Settlement)Algeria’s RTGS, live since February 2006, for large-value transfers and urgent payments, accessible through the national financial network and Swift. It also handles the daily final settlement of ATCI clearing balances; without it, Algerian card payments (CIB, Edahabia) would have no settlement leg.Banque d'Algérie · since 2006