The Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) and the Qatar Central Bank have agreed to of each other’s national payment cards, letting Saudi Arabia’s mada card work in Qatar and Qatar’s Himyan card work in Saudi Arabia. The two regulators announced the agreement on 15 September 2026 during Money20/20 Middle East in Riyadh, in the presence of Qatar Central Bank governor Sheikh Bandar bin Mohammed bin Saoud Al Thani and Saudi Central Bank governor Ayman bin Mohammed bin Saud Al-Sayari.
The two governors said the move marked “a new milestone in advancing cooperation and integration between the national payment systems of the two countries.”
Acceptance will roll out gradually, following completion of the technical and operational integration arrangements between the two networks, with no fixed date given for when full acceptance takes effect in either market.
Part of a wider regional push
The agreement extends a pattern already under way for Qatar’s Himyan card specifically. It gained , making Saudi Arabia the latest market added to that expansion. Mada, Saudi Arabia’s domestic payment network, has not previously been reported pursuing the same bilateral acceptance arrangements with other GCC states.
The approach differs from the co badging model the UAE has used to extend its own national scheme, Jaywan, internationally, linking it to Mastercard’s global acceptance network rather than negotiating direct bilateral acceptance deals with individual countries. The mada Himyan agreement instead links the two domestic schemes to each other directly.
Why the negotiation is harder than it sounds
The Fintech Times, assessing the announcement, said what makes it significant is what a domestic card scheme actually is:
“The most sovereign piece of retail payments infrastructure a country builds, tied to its own settlement rails, fee structures and supervisory reach.”
Reciprocal acceptance between two such schemes, the outlet said,
“it is a harder negotiation than opening a QR corridor, because each central bank has to accept the other’s rules inside its own acceptance network.”
That framing matches what both central banks themselves said: acceptance will be “introduced gradually, once the technical and operational integration between the two schemes is complete,” with no date yet set for when either card starts working across the border in practice.
What’s next
Neither central bank has set a date for when acceptance actually goes live in either market, only that it will happen once the underlying technical integration is finished. Whether that integration takes weeks or the better part of a year is the detail that will determine if this Saudi-Qatar payments agreement changes anything for a traveller or business using either card in the near term.
