Israel's card companies and tashlumim
A card company (chevrat kartisei ashrai) is an Israeli institution that issues the payment instrument, carries the cardholder's balance and, in most cases, also acquires the merchant. It sits between cardholders and their banks. Europe has no equivalent in this form: there, the bank that holds the account usually issues the card. Three companies fill this role: Isracard, max, and Cal. Cal, Israel Credit Cards Ltd, trades under the Visa Cal brand. The cardholder's bank holds the settlement account the charges are debited from, but plays no part in issuing the card or carrying the balance.
The deferred debit card dominates the Israeli market; immediate debit and revolving credit remain minority products. Purchases accumulate over a monthly cycle, then a single debit hits the account on a fixed date. So when Israelis say credit card, as they routinely do, they almost never mean revolving credit as a European professional would understand it. The card company's risk is concentrated on a single monthly due date. It is not spread over a balance rolled over from month to month.
| Company | Active cards (2022) | Ownership | What an acquirer needs to know |
|---|---|---|---|
| Isracard | ≈ 4.3M | Listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange since Bank Hapoalim's divestment | Historically a purely domestic brand: an Isracard card that is not co-badged is not accepted outside Israel, and foreign gateways cannot process it either |
| Cal (Israel Credit Cards) | Over 3.1M | Israel Discount Bank, ordered in January 2023 to divest | Issues under the Visa brand; also acquires, with its own merchant fee schedule |
| max | ≈ 2.5M | Warburg Pincus and Israeli investors since 2019 | Formerly Leumi Card; the first Israeli card company with a foreign majority owner |
Tashlumim (תשלומים), or installment payments, lets a cardholder pay for a purchase in several monthly installments charged to the card. Above a few hundred shekels, merchants almost always offer three, six, 12, or more installments, interest-free for the cardholder. For much of Israeli retail, in store and online, installments are the default way to buy. They are not a promotional option. A checkout that does not offer them forces the buyer to pay in full up front, when local practice is to split purchases of that size.
- The number of installments travels in the authorization message. A gateway that does not expose this field cannot sell normally in Israel: average order value collapses.
- Two funding models coexist. So-called “credit-free” installments only spread the cardholder's debit; installments carried by the card company actually finance the purchase, and the merchant pays for them.
- Merchant settlement follows the installment plan chosen, unless the contract says otherwise. Misread the contract, and an ILS 12,000 sale turns into 12 monthly payouts.
- Tashlumim does not mix well with international wallets: the number of installments is chosen in the local checkout flow, not in the wallet protocol.
Shva: one switch, and only one
Shva (Automated Bank Services Ltd, often shortened to ABS) runs the national card switch, the single hub that every authorization request originated in Israel passes through. Every Israeli terminal, payment gateway, and card company connects to it, and the market has no alternative route. Its terminal integration protocol, Ashrait, is the local standard. A terminal with international EMV approval but no Ashrait certification cannot be connected by any Israeli acquirer.
Israel's terminal base migrated to EMV late, and only under regulatory pressure. In mid-2013, the Bank of Israel asked banks and card companies to draw up a plan to replace their terminals. From January 2016, acquirers and Shva could no longer connect a new terminal that was not EMV compliant, so only compliant equipment went in from then on. The migration was completed in the early 2020s, and contactless then spread very quickly across the new terminal base.
- Plan a non-card fallback at the register: cash, an instant transfer via Masav, or an app payment. Acquirer redundancy offers no protection, since every acquirer goes through Shva.
- Check Ashrait certification for the terminals and the gateway before any commercial commitment; EMV Level 2 approval is not enough.
- Track decline rates by card company, not in aggregate: Isracard, max, and Cal have different approval policies.
- Treat tashlumim as reconciliation data: a single sale generates several settlement lines spread over time.
Zahav, Masav, and the digital shekel
Two infrastructures carry Israel's non-card payments. Zahav, launched in 2007, is the real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system run by the Bank of Israel. It is the only place in the country where payments settle with finality in central bank money. Masav (Banks' Clearing Center), in operation since 1982, is the retail clearing house; it is owned by the banks and supervised by the Bank of Israel.
Masav runs both the legacy ACH and Israel's instant payment rail, which has no consumer brand of its own. Unlike Pix or PromptPay, Israeli instant payments go by no commercial name at all, and some foreign integrators conclude that they don't exist. Instant settlement takes five to seven seconds, around the clock. The Bank of Israel is migrating the rail to ISO 20022 and extending it to merchant, government, and Request-to-Pay use cases (Bank of Israel, 2025).
| Infrastructure | Operator | What it carries | Since |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zahav | Bank of Israel | Real-time gross settlement; finality in central bank money; SWIFT and IBAN interface | 2007 |
| Masav | Banks' Clearing Center, owned by the banks | Retail ACH and instant payments in 5 to 7 seconds, 24/7; ISO 20022 migration under way | 1970 |
| Shva | Automated Bank Services Ltd | Authorization and clearing of all card payments in the country | – |
Direct access means a non-bank can connect to Zahav, Shva, and Masav without a sponsor bank. Opening up that access is the defining project in the Israeli market. The Bank of Israel has begun simplifying the connection process for fintechs, and the 2023 payment services law gives them a legal basis. A non-bank issuer or acquirer can now aim for direct access, whereas entering the market used to mean depending on an incumbent bank.
Bit and PayBox: from P2P to merchant payments
Bit, launched by Bank Hapoalim in 2017, is Israel's leading peer-to-peer payment app. PayBox, backed by Israel Discount Bank, ranks second. Both followed the same path, from free transfers between friends to merchant acceptance, and both have become payment infrastructure in their own right. The trajectory resembles that of Swish in Sweden or Bizum in Spain, with one difference in origin: Bit was launched by a single bank, not by a consortium of the country's banks.
The Bank of Israel has since changed that original setup. It authorized Bit to become a wallet open to customers of all banks and to issue a card. The service, once limited to its founding bank's customers, became market-wide infrastructure while remaining owned by Bank Hapoalim. Rival banks now watch their own customers use an app owned by a competitor. The regulator opened up access without touching ownership, and that gap between shared infrastructure and private control shapes Israel's debate over wallets.
Bit stopped being free in January 2025, when Bank Hapoalim began charging for amounts received through the app. At the same time, the annual receiving limit rose from 50,000 to 100,000 shekels. Above 25,000 shekels received in a year, a 0.6% fee applies (Globes, 2024). Accepting Bit is therefore no longer free above that threshold, and merchants now weigh its cost against card fees.
Israeli licensing: an unexpected regulator
The Regulation of Payment Services and Payment Initiation Law, 5783-2023 was published in June 2023 and took effect in June 2024. It creates a single licensing regime for non-bank payment service providers. The licensing authority is the Israel Securities Authority, the capital markets regulator, not the Bank of Israel. The central bank retains oversight of payment systems.
- Issuing payment instruments: cards, wallets, and prepaid instruments.
- Acquiring payment transactions: collecting payments on behalf of a merchant.
- Managing payment accounts: holding customer balances outside a bank balance sheet.
- Payment initiation: triggering a payment order from an account held elsewhere, the functional equivalent of the EU's payment initiation service.
The first licenses went to international and local firms, including Revolut and Grow Payments. The regime works alongside a second statute, the financial information service law, which governs access to account data and forms Israel's open banking framework. The same authority administers both laws, so an applicant seeking to offer both initiation and aggregation deals with a single regulator for its two applications.
The 2023 licensing regime is part of a broader policy of opening the market to non-banks. Until then, three card companies and a handful of banks controlled the entire value chain. The separation of the card companies from the banks that began in 2017, the phased interchange cuts, and the opening of the infrastructure all belong to that same policy, pursued over a decade.
Lebanon: accepting payments in a cash economy
Lebanon's payment system runs outside the banking system, since the country's banks stopped making deposits available. Since October 2019, withdrawal and transfer restrictions imposed by banks without any formal legal basis have split the currency in two. The bank dollar, held in an account and not withdrawable at face value, is known in economic literature as the “lollar.” It differs from the fresh dollar, a banknote or incoming transfer, which is the only kind accepted at the posted price. The two trade at different values, and the gap between them sets the rate actually applied to a transaction, depending on the channel used.
A card issued by a Lebanese bank no longer guarantees cardholders access to their funds, and trust in account debits collapsed along with it. Payment acceptance has shifted to three channels that do not depend on bank balance sheets: cash, wallets licensed by the Banque du Liban, and money transfer agent networks. These three channels now form the country's real payment infrastructure, as banks no longer play the central role they held before 2019.
| Channel | Typical provider | What it solves | Cost or exposure |
|---|---|---|---|
| US dollar cash | – | Accepted everywhere, no intermediary, at face value | Transport, counting, theft risk; feeds the concern documented by the FATF |
| Licensed wallet | Whish Money (operated by TecFrac) | Merchant payments, bills, transfers, cash-in and cash-out at agents, virtual Visa cards | Needs a physical network for cash-in and cash-out |
| Money transfer agent network | OMT | Receiving diaspora remittances and local payments | Per-transaction pricing; relies on a dense agent network |
| Card gateway | Areeba and other regional gateways | International card acceptance for e-commerce | Does not reach unbanked local customers, who remain the majority |
Whish Money is the country's most visible e-wallet, both in merchant acceptance and in its physical network. It operates under a Banque du Liban license granted by Decision No. 19/21/22 of August 10, 2022. The wallet claims more than 1,000 service points in Lebanon (whish.money, accessed August 2026). In 2025, a partnership with Mastercard Move opened inbound and outbound cross-border transfers from the wallet. OMT, for its part, reports more than 1,000 points of sale.
Jordan: six systems, one shared operator
Jordan splits payments between a wholesale settlement system run by the central bank and retail rails grouped under a shared operator. The Central Bank of Jordan has run the RTGS-JO real-time gross settlement system since 2002. The retail rails are run by the Jordan Payments and Clearing Company (JoPACC), a joint-stock company set up in 2017 by the central bank and the country's 25 banks. It brings together five systems, whose net positions all settle in RTGS-JO, the kingdom's only point of finality in central bank money.
| System | Operator | Since | Function |
|---|---|---|---|
| RTGS-JO | Central Bank of Jordan | 2002 | Wholesale settlement; the only point of finality in central bank money |
| ECC | JoPACC | 2007 | Check image clearing; checks remain widely used as a guarantee instrument. Platform rebuilt in 2023 |
| JoMoPay | JoPACC on behalf of the central bank | 2013 | National mobile money switch: Jordanian wallets are interoperable by design |
| eFAWATEERcom | JoPACC / Central Bank of Jordan | 2014 | National bill payment system: a single hub for presenting and paying public and private bills |
| CliQ | JoPACC | 2020 | Alias-based instant rail that puts bank accounts and mobile wallets on an equal footing |
| JONET | Network International Jordan | – | ATM and POS switch, routing to banks and international card networks |
CliQ, launched in June 2020, is Jordan's alias-based instant payment rail. The alias, or CliQ ID, can point to either a bank account or a mobile wallet, which puts both on the same footing. Zain Cash, Dinarak, UWallet, and Orange Money can be reached just like any Jordanian IBAN. Merchant use, however, is still in its infancy: according to the Central Bank of Jordan, only about 10% of CliQ transactions are purchases.
Card acceptance runs through JONET, a switch operated by Network International Jordan. In 2021, the operator reported that every ATM in the kingdom and about 80% of merchants were connected. JONET routes ATM and POS transactions, while JoPACC runs the account-to-account rails, a distinction market studies often blur. Neither replaces the other: a Jordanian payment acceptance project falls under one or the other depending on the instrument.
The Palestinian Territories and Syria
The Palestine Monetary Authority (PMA) supervises the banking system in the Palestinian Territories but issues no national currency. The Israeli shekel, the Jordanian dinar, and the US dollar all circulate there. Local infrastructure is therefore multicurrency out of necessity, not ambition, and a platform built for a single currency struggles with that constraint.
- I-Buraq (also spelled e-Buraq): an instant payment system launched by the PMA in 2025. It credits and notifies the payee in under 10 seconds, in three currencies, and supports Request-to-Pay and fund recalls. Its launch was a direct response to the cash shortage in Gaza.
- e-SADAD: the PMA's central billing and payment gateway for government services and utilities.
- National Key 194: the national card network claimed by the PMA, alongside electronic check clearing.
- Quick: a QR payment service built on I-Buraq.
PalPay, part of the Bank of Palestine group, is the market's leading acquirer and bill payment provider, and it also runs the PalPay Mahfazti wallet. It was the first to offer I-Buraq, including Request-to-Pay. Jawwal Pay, a subsidiary of the Paltel group, was the first company to receive a full payment service provider license from the PMA. It serves the unbanked through an agent network. System names cause recurring confusion in databases, because the PMA also uses “BURAQ” for its RTGS, which is separate from the I-Buraq instant rail.
Syria is emerging from a sanctions regime that had cut it off from international finance. Sanctions were lifted in stages over 2025, but the process remains incomplete in practice, as correspondent banking channels are being restored only gradually. The country is therefore not yet an addressable market in the usual sense. Any regional player should still track its regulatory timeline, since the market will open as those steps progress.
Operating in the region: what breaks and what it costs
The region spans five markets under five separate regulators, with no interoperability between their payment infrastructures. An Israeli acquiring contract carries no weight in Jordan, and a Jordanian license does not open the Lebanese market. None of the region's instant payment rails is linked to a neighbor's. The most advanced cross-border project is Jordanian: the central bank plans an initial phase of the CliQ Plus service through exchange houses, in cooperation with wallet providers.
| Market | Payments regulator | Instant rail | What makes projects fail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Israel | Israel Securities Authority (license), Bank of Israel (systems) | Masav, 5 to 7 s | No tashlumim and no acceptance of non-co-badged Isracard cards |
| Jordan | Central Bank of Jordan | CliQ, since 2020 | License required, even for a branch; CliQ use still mostly P2P |
| Lebanon | Banque du Liban | – | Cash economy, dual currency, and on the FATF gray list since October 2024 |
| Palestinian Territories | Palestine Monetary Authority | I-Buraq, under 10 s | Three currencies in circulation, no national currency |
| Syria | Central Bank of Syria | – | SWIFT reconnection under way; residual compliance risk despite the lifting of US sanctions |
- Qualify the rail before the PSP. In Israel, the question is not which provider to use, but whether it is connected to Shva and Ashrait certified. In Jordan, it is JoPACC or JONET, and the answer depends on whether you accept cards or account-to-account payments.
- Model installments in the product catalog from day one for Israel. Tashlumim changes average order value, cash flow timing, and reconciliation. Retrofitting it after launch means a rebuild.
- Plan a non-card fallback payment method in Israel. The Shva incident of February 13, 2025, halted all commerce in the country at once, after the October 2024 one had hit companies connected from abroad.
- Treat currency as compliance data in Lebanon and Palestine, not as a display setting. The applicable rate depends on the channel and the nature of the funds.
- Date your compliance opinions on Syria and recheck them before opening each new flow; the 2025 lifting of US sanctions says nothing about EU lists or correspondent bank policies.