The QCB payment services licence, explained for merchants

The rulebook: the Payment Services Regulation

Qatar Central Bank’s Payment Services Regulation has been in force since 15 September 2021 and is published on qcb.gov.qa. It requires an entity providing payment services in or from Qatar to hold a QCB licence, and it gives QCB approval rights over merchant onboarding by licensed providers.

QCB followed it with a cyber-security regulation for payment service providers in 2022, which sets security obligations on the same population of firms. Banks are supervised under the banking framework instead and are exempt from the payment services licence requirement.

What the licence categories cover

The regulation is not a single permission. It covers distinct activities, and a provider is licensed for the ones it applies for. The categories that matter to an online merchant are:

• Card acquiring: accepting card transactions on behalf of merchants
• Electronic money issuance: issuing the stored value behind a wallet
• Payment gateway services: routing and processing transactions
• Money transfer and remittance
• Settlement and clearing services
• ATM operation

A provider licensed for e-money issuance is not automatically licensed to acquire card transactions for you. Ask which category covers the service you are buying.

Who holds a licence

Qatar Central Bank’s 2025 annual report records 14 licensed fintech companies, spanning card acquiring, electronic money and buy-now-pay-later. Acquiring and gateway licensees named in that population include Pay2M, Noqoody, SkipCash, MyFatoorah, Dibsy, Sadad, 7sab, Tess Payments and Tap. Electronic money issuers include iPay, Ooredoo Money and CWallet. Buy-now-pay-later licensees include PayLater and Tamanna.

In 2026 QCB opened direct access to the Qatar Real Time Gross Settlement system to payment service providers, with Sadad and Dibsy among the first. That is a structural change: it lets licensed non-banks settle without sitting behind a bank.

This list reflects QCB’s published reporting at the time of writing. Licences are granted and amended over time, so treat the regulator’s own list as the only current source.

The distinction that catches people out

Not every brand marketing payment services in Qatar holds its own QCB licence. Some are software companies that operate on top of a licensed partner, which is a legitimate and common arrangement worldwide. The problem is not the model; it is when the merchant does not know which one they are buying.

It matters for practical reasons. Who holds your settlement funds? Who is answerable to the regulator if something goes wrong? Whose name appears on the merchant agreement you are signing? If the answer to those three is a company that is not the one whose logo is on the website, you should at least know that before you sign, not after.

Five questions to ask any provider

A straight answer to all five is a good sign regardless of which model the provider uses. Evasion on any of them is the signal, not the model itself.

• Are you licensed by Qatar Central Bank, and under which category, or do you operate through a licensed partner?
• Which legal entity is named on the merchant agreement I will sign?
• Who holds my funds between the customer paying and my settlement, and on what cycle?
• What happens to settlement if my account is put under review?
• Who do I escalate to if the answer from support is not good enough?

Where Rapid Gateway stands

We will answer our own questions. Payments in Qatar are processed through a payment service provider licensed by Qatar Central Bank. Rapid Gateway provides the platform around it, the checkout, the merchant portal, invoicing, WhatsApp commerce and CRM, and handles your onboarding end to end.

We say this on every page of this site rather than in a footnote, because a merchant deciding where to send their revenue is entitled to know exactly what sits behind it.

Frequently asked questions