SAMA to Bring Tap to Pay on iPhone to Saudi Merchants

The Saudi Central Bank says Tap to Pay on iPhone will soon be available in Saudi Arabia. SAMA announced the plan at the Money20/20 Middle East conference, which took place at the Riyadh International Convention and Exhibition Center in Malham from 14 to 16 September 2026.

Once the service launches, merchants will accept payments directly on a compatible iPhone. The handset's near-field communication hardware does the work, so a counter no longer needs a separate card terminal sitting next to the till.

What the customer does

For the shopper, the routine barely changes. A buyer holds a smart device or a contactless card close to the merchant's iPhone and the transaction completes.

• mada cards
• Other cards with contactless capability
• Digital wallets

Acceptance that runs on hardware a merchant already owns alters the arithmetic for smaller businesses. Buying or leasing a terminal has long been part of the cost of taking cards. Software-led acceptance removes that step.

Standing on SoftPOS

The service is not being built from nothing. It extends the national payments infrastructure, which includes the Software Point of Sale service SAMA introduced in 2021. SoftPOS allows an everyday device to function as a payment acceptance point through software rather than dedicated hardware.

SAMA says the new service is designed to meet international standards while also satisfying local technical requirements for accepting payments.

One item on a longer list

Tap to Pay on iPhone belongs to a broader set of initiatives from the central bank. Those efforts respond to the needs of the Saudi market and aim to improve the digital payment experience for merchants and for consumers, SAMA said in the announcement.

The card schemes and wallets that merchants already accept carry over into the new channel. What changes is the device at the point of sale, not the money moving behind it. Customers keep paying the way they pay now.

SAMA did not give a date for the switch-on.