HimyanQatar's national debit and prepaid card. It was mandated first for government payments, then expanded across the Gulf: a domestic scheme “kick-started by public procurement.”Qatar Central Bank (QCB) · since 2024Mandatory for collecting government service fees since February 2025; acceptance opened in Kuwait (December 18, 2025), then in Bahrain (June 2026) (QCB / QNA).
Global registry · Africa & Middle East · West Asia
Qatar Payment systems
6 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.
IBAN · Qatar
29 characters82 BIC codes
- Total length
- 29 characters
- Bank code position
- 5–8
- BBAN structure
4!a21!c
Structurally valid example
QAcountry code58check digitsDOHBbank00001234567890ABCDEFGaccount
QA58 DOHB 0000 1234 5678 90AB CDEF G
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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
Instant payments
FawranQatar’s 24/7 instant rail, run directly by the central bank rather than by a bank consortium; pricing is capped by the regulator.Qatar Central Bank · since 2024Daily limits of QAR 5,000 to QAR 400,000 depending on the bank; a fee of QAR 0.50 up to QAR 1,000 and QAR 2 above that (secondary sources, 2026).
Clearing and settlement
QATCHQatar's automated clearing house: low-value credit transfers and direct debits exchanged in batches between financial institutions over a secure electronic network, with next-day settlement. It is the rail for payroll and recurring debits. Do not confuse it with Fawran (instant, retail) or QA-RTGS (high-value, real-time).Qatar Central Bank
Interoperable QR
QMP (Qatar Mobile Payment)Qatar’s first instant, interoperable national switch for mobile payment services, connecting all licensed providers, both banks and payment institutions. It carries wallet-to-wallet transfers 24 hours a day, transfers between a wallet and a bank account held by the same person, and merchant acceptance by QR code. Users enroll by mobile number, alias, or both, with one wallet per identifier. The announced launch year (2020) could not be confirmed on the central bank’s page.Qatar Central Bank
Other
QA-RTGSQatar's RTGS, ISO 20022-native, launched on December 16, 2024, to replace QPS. Riyal and foreign currency transfers between local banks were enabled on it in December 2025. It is the settlement leg for Fawran, the NAPS network, and check clearing. The earlier inventory of Qatar left this infrastructure out in favor of much lighter retail services.Qatar Central Bank · since 2024
QPS (Qatar Payment System)DiscontinuedQatar's former RTGS, which relied on the SWIFT network to route messages and communicate with participants. It was replaced by QA-RTGS on December 16, 2024. The acronym still appears widely in older contracts and banking documentation, where it sometimes refers loosely to all QCB payment systems. That is why it helps to know when it was retired.Qatar Central Bank