Payment Processing · Buyer guide
Kuwait has no published cap on what a payment provider may charge a business to take a card. Instead, the Central Bank bars the business from passing that cost to the customer, for debit and credit cards alike, and makes the payment providers police the ban through their merchant contracts. So whatever a KNET or credit card payment costs, the merchant pays all of it.
This guide sets out what that cost is, from the Kuwaiti price lists we could find, and the rules from the Central Bank of Kuwait and the Ministry of Commerce and Industry that shape how a business takes payment. Every price below comes from the provider's own Kuwait page, terms or published price list, read on 3 November 2026, and is in Kuwaiti dinars (KD). One dinar is 1,000 fils.
Kuwait's national debit network is KNET, the Shared Electronic Banking Services Company. The Central Bank of Kuwait records that it was set up in 1992 in partnership with the local banks. According to KNET's own history page, as archived in June 2024, it began providing services in 1994 and processed its first online payment in 2004. It runs the interbank switch, ATM and point-of-sale services, and a payment gateway for e-commerce and e-government. KNET's live site was blocked to us by a bot check, so the later dates come from the archived copy.
KNET is the network, not usually the company a merchant signs with. You contract with a bank or a licensed payment company, which connects you to KNET and to Visa and Mastercard. Apple Pay with a KNET card also runs through KNET: in September 2023 the Central Bank told every local bank to link directly to KNET for Apple Pay debit transactions within six months.
Circular No. 2/RB,RBA,RK/600/2025, issued on 30 September 2025 to all local banks, e-payment service providers and e-money service providers, responds to complaints that customers were being charged extra for paying with KNET or credit cards through payment gateways and card terminals. It requires providers to put a clause in their merchant agreements forbidding any additional fee or amount on a customer in Kuwait who pays electronically, whatever the method. A provider that finds a breach must act against the merchant, including suspending its service if needed, and existing agreements had to be updated within a month. The circular appears in the Central Bank's Arabic compilation of e-payment circulars.
This builds on a December 2022 circular barring e-payment infrastructure providers and their agents from collecting any fee or commission from the end customer for e-payment services, and telling them to update their contracts. Bank contracts carry the same rule. Commercial Bank of Kuwait's KNET payment gateway agreement, for example, says the merchant shall not charge cardholders any fee or additional amount for using any payment method, and treats a breach as a breach of contract.
The Central Bank's Instructions Regulating the Electronic Payment of Funds, issued in May 2023, prohibit a provider from collecting or changing any fee under any name without the Central Bank's written approval, and tell providers to announce their fees, including on their websites. In October 2023 the Central Bank asked every local bank to report all the fees it charges for payment services, naming payment gateways and card terminals. We found no published cap on the merchant rate itself. And in practice most providers still do not print one: Commercial Bank of Kuwait's August 2025 tariff lists both terminal and gateway fees as "based on arrangement with merchant".
The same instructions require a provider to deposit funds into the payee's account no later than the end of the next business day after they reach its own account, and to settle only through local bank accounts. Tap, for one, advertises next-business-day KNET payouts, subject to its payout schedule.
The Ministry of Commerce and Industry has started requiring electronic payment in named sectors. Ministerial Decision 182 of 2025, dated 30 October 2025, bars businesses trading in gold, precious stones and precious metals, and related activities, from taking any cash: every payment must go through non-cash instruments approved by the Central Bank. Decision 32 of 2026, dated 6 April 2026, bars health institutes, men's, women's and children's salons, sports clubs, pest control companies and businesses that import, export or store public-health pesticides from taking more than KD 10 in cash for a sale or contract. Anything above that must go through banking or e-payment channels the Central Bank approves. Both took effect on issue, and a business that breaks them faces closure and referral for prosecution.
Of the providers we checked, two publish Kuwaiti prices. Both quote a percentage plus, in most cases, a fixed fee in fils, and both say they are licensed by the Central Bank.
UPayments' gateway page lists the two KNET prices with "OR" between them and does not say which applies or who chooses. The flat 250 fils is cheaper only on payments above KD 30, so ask which one your contract will use.
Several familiar names do not help here. Stripe (our grade: A) does not list Kuwait among its supported countries. Checkout.com (our grade: C+) documents KNET as a payment method you can enable through your account manager, but its pricing page gives no figures. Adyen (our grade: A-) marks KNET as no longer supported on its own payment-method page. MyFatoorah, Ottu and the banks' acquiring arms publish no merchant rates that we could find.
Take a small online shop with 300 orders a month at an average of KD 12, so KD 3,600 of sales: 240 paid by KNET (KD 2,880) and 60 by Visa or Mastercard (KD 720). On Tap's published Acceptance rates:
Of that KD 78.60, KD 30 is the 100-fils fixed fee, which does not shrink as the basket does. Over a first year the one-off and monthly fees matter as much as the rate: Tap's monthly fee, at its ceiling of KD 25, comes to KD 300 a year. Whatever the total, the customer cannot be asked to cover any of it.
Fixed fees bite hardest in store, where KNET payments are often small. Take a café taking KD 4,500 a month by KNET, on Tap's published Terminal rate of 1.75% + 100 fils:
The 100 fils is the difference. On a KD 3 payment it alone is 3.3% of the sale. Because Tap says its pricing can be customised by volume, a business taking many small payments should ask about the fixed fee specifically, and compare written quotes from more than one provider before signing.
PayPal (our grade: A-) is available to Kuwaiti businesses, but it is for foreign buyers, not KNET, and its prices are on a different basis from the local rates above. On PayPal's Kuwait fee page, a seller receiving an international commercial payment pays 4.40% plus a fixed fee, which is USD 0.30 on a payment in US dollars, so a USD 100 sale costs USD 4.70. Converting a balance or payment into another currency costs 3.0%, and each withdrawal to a Kuwaiti bank account in dinars costs KD 1.50.
The two big Gulf buy-now-pay-later firms are uncertain options in Kuwait. Tabby (our grade: B-) and Tamara (our grade: B-) both still run Kuwait versions of their websites, but their merchant documentation centres on Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and neither publishes a Kuwaiti merchant rate. Confirm availability and price directly. The Central Bank regulates buy-now-pay-later separately and has published conditions for non-resident companies offering it in Kuwait. For what these services cost elsewhere, see our guide to BNPL merchant fees.
Kuwait has not introduced VAT, so the rates above carry none. PwC's Kuwait tax summary, last reviewed on 22 July 2026, lists no VAT in force: Kuwait signed the GCC VAT framework agreement in 2017 but has not passed a law to apply it. Tap's terms already say its fees exclude any VAT and that the merchant would bear it, so if Kuwait introduces VAT it would be added on top of the fee.
For KNET, the published prices differ most on the fixed fee and on how one-off and monthly charges are set, so model your own mix of payment sizes rather than comparing headline percentages, and compare like with like: online rates with online rates, terminal rates with terminal rates. Tap also publishes rates for American Express and foreign cards and holds licences across the Gulf, which matters if you sell in more than one country. Ask any provider for four things in writing: the KNET rate and whether a fixed fee applies, the credit card rate for local and foreign cards, every setup, monthly and device fee, and the payout schedule. If you also sell in neighbouring markets, compare our guides to card fees in the UAE and in Saudi Arabia.
