Payment Processing · Buyer guide
In Qatar, the central bank has announced what a debit card payment should cost a merchant. In May 2023 Qatar Central Bank (QCB) lowered and unified the merchant discount rate on card payments, the share of each sale the merchant pays its bank. Credit cards and online payments are another matter: there, payment companies set their own prices, and a few of them now publish those prices in full.
This guide sets out both: the rates the central bank announced, the rules on what a shop may charge its customers, and the price lists of the Qatari payment companies that publish one. Every provider price below comes from the company's own website, read on 13 November 2026, and is in Qatari riyals (QAR). None includes VAT, because Qatar has none.
Qatari bank debit cards run on NAPS, the national network for ATMs and points of sale. Online, local debit cards pay through QPay, the national e-commerce gateway. In March 2024 the central bank launched Himyan, a national debit card under a Qatari brand it owns, which local banks issue to their account holders. Himyan transactions in Qatar run over NAPS, and QCB says the card carries lower transaction costs for issuers, acquirers and merchants. In September 2026 QCB and the Saudi Central Bank announced the gradual start of Himyan acceptance in Saudi Arabia and of Saudi mada cards in Qatar.
Banks are not the only route to NAPS. In April 2025 QCB announced that Sadad had become the first fintech company to connect directly to both NAPS and QPay for card payment processing.
QCB announced the new rates in a post on its X account on 21 May 2023, as reported that day by the state news agency QNA, in English and Arabic, and the next day by Gulf Times. QNA's Arabic report describes the merchant discount rate as the fee merchants pay to their acquiring banks. For local debit cards and local prepaid cards, the rate is 0.5% with a maximum of QAR 50 a transaction for micro businesses and petrol stations, and 1.1% with a maximum of QAR 110 for other businesses. On the national Himyan card, which the English reports at the time called a prepaid card, micro businesses and petrol stations pay the same 0.5% (maximum QAR 50) and other businesses 0.85% (maximum QAR 85). On international credit and prepaid cards, QCB set 1.25% for micro businesses and 1% for petrol stations, and the reports give no rate for other businesses.
Some cautions. We could not find the circular itself or QCB's original post, only the reports of it, so we do not know how QCB defines a micro business, whether the rates are fixed prices or ceilings, or whether payment companies are bound in the same way as banks. We found no later QCB announcement changing them. Nor do the reports say whether the 0.85% Himyan rate carries over to the Himyan debit card launched in 2024; both payment companies below charge Himyan at their NAPS rate. And the published prices below do not all match QCB's 1.1%: Sadad charges 1.1% on NAPS cards at its terminals, while Noqoody charges 1.45%. Ask your bank or provider which debit rate applies to you, and whether you qualify for the micro-business rate.
The ban on card surcharges goes back to February 2016, when the ministry then responsible for commerce, together with QCB, told all points of sale not to add any fee for paying by credit or debit card. The Ministry of Commerce and Industry has since repeated it in a circular telling outlets that accept cards not to impose any additional charge for using them. Decision 70 of 2022, amending the ministry's Decision 161 of 2017 on the conditions outlets must meet, goes further: every commercial outlet must offer at least one of three kinds of electronic payment, a bank card, a bank payment wallet or a QR code, and the ministry says the service must come without additional charges. In July 2025 it reminded businesses that failing to offer electronic payment breaks Article 18 of Law No. 5 of 2015, with administrative closure for 15 days as the penalty.
Bank contracts carry the same rule. QIIB's merchant agreement forbids a merchant to charge a card-paying customer more than its regular price, add any extra charge for paying by card, set a minimum card amount, or refuse a card in favour of cash. So whatever the card costs, the merchant pays all of it.
We found no published merchant price list from a Qatari bank; QIIB's merchant agreement, for one, says the rate is as agreed with each merchant. Two payment companies, neither of which we have reviewed, publish full price lists for their card terminals:
The two lists differ in shape. Sadad is cheaper on debit cards; Noqoody is cheaper on credit cards and wallets, and has no fixed fee. Which comes out ahead depends on your mix of cards, as the worked example below shows.
Online rates are higher, even on debit cards. Three Qatari providers publish theirs:
The fixed parts matter on small baskets. On a QAR 50 debit card payment, Noqoody's price is QAR 1.73 (3.5%), Dibsy's QAR 2.25 (4.5%) and Sadad's minimum charge QAR 2.50 (5%).
Take an online shop with 300 orders a month at an average of QAR 150, so QAR 45,000 of sales: 180 orders paid by NAPS debit card (QAR 27,000) and 120 by local Visa or Mastercard credit card (QAR 18,000). On each provider's published online rates:
Monthly fees aside, the difference comes mostly from the debit cards: Noqoody's 1.45% on local debit is well below the 2.5% the other two charge. A shop whose customers mostly pay by NAPS should weigh that before the headline rate.
Take a café taking QAR 60,000 a month in store at an average of QAR 40 a payment: QAR 42,000 on NAPS debit cards (1,050 payments) and QAR 18,000 on local credit cards (450 payments). On each provider's published terminal rates, with one terminal:
Sadad is QAR 147 a month cheaper on the debit cards, but its 2.4% + QAR 0.5 on credit costs QAR 297 more, so Noqoody wins on this mix. If a bank charged the debit rates QCB announced in 2023, the café would pay the same QAR 462 on debit as with Sadad, or QAR 210 at 0.5% if it counted as a micro business. Banks do not publish their credit card or terminal prices, so get a written quote to compare.
Most international names publish no Qatari price. Stripe (our grade: A) does not list Qatar among its supported countries. Tap Payments (our grade: B-) says it holds a payment service provider licence from Qatar Central Bank and supports NAPS and QPay, but its Qatar terms and conditions, unlike its Kuwait terms, end without a fee table. PayTabs (our grade: B-) signed a partnership with Doha Bank in October 2025 to serve Qatari merchants, but lists no Qatari prices that we could find. Checkout.com (our grade: C+) lists QPay, for shoppers paying with Qatari cards, as a gateway-only method that needs a direct contract with a local provider and is switched on through your account manager, without a published price.
PayPal (our grade: A-) is available to Qatari businesses, but it serves buyers abroad, not NAPS, and its prices are on a different basis from the local ones above. On PayPal's Qatar 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 into another currency costs 3.0%, and each withdrawal to a Qatari bank account in riyals costs QAR 18.
The two big Gulf buy-now-pay-later firms, Tabby (our grade: B-) and Tamara (our grade: B-), have no Qatar edition of their websites: Tabby's Qatar address sends you to its UAE page, and Tamara's returns an error page.
Fawran, QCB's instant payment service, launched in March 2024 for transfers between bank accounts in Qatar, capped at QAR 50,000 a transaction at launch, using a mobile number or alias instead of an IBAN. Since October 2024 merchants can register to accept Fawran payments through QPay. We found no published merchant price for it; the bank fees we found are what the sender pays. Ask your bank or gateway whether it offers Fawran and at what price.
Qatar imposes no VAT or sales tax, according to PwC's Qatar tax summary, last reviewed on 17 September 2026, though it expects VAT at 5% under the GCC framework. Tap's Qatar terms already say its fees exclude VAT and that the merchant would bear any that is imposed, so check how your contract words it.
Start with your card mix and basket size, not a headline rate. In store, the split between debit and credit cards decides which price list is cheaper; online, the fixed fees and minimum charges decide what small orders cost. Compare like with like: terminal rates with terminal rates, online with online, local cards with local cards. Ask any bank or provider for five things in writing: the NAPS and Himyan rate and whether you qualify as a micro business, the credit card rate for local and international cards, any fixed fee or minimum charge, every setup, monthly and device fee, and the payout schedule. If you sell in neighbouring markets too, compare our guides to card fees in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
