How do people in Mauritius pay online?
Cards come first. The Bank of Mauritius counted 2.13 million cards in circulation in June 2025, up 3.7% in a year. Visa and Mastercard cards from Mauritian banks are the usual way to pay on a payment page.
Phone wallets work on top of those cards. Mauritius is on Apple’s list of Apple Pay countries and on Google’s list for paying online and in apps with Google Pay. MCB, for example, says its cards work with Apple Pay across Apple devices for purchases online, in apps and in person.
Banking apps carry more and more payments. Mobile banking subscribers rose 14.5% to 1.91 million in the year to June 2025, while internet banking customers reached 780,589. MCB Juice, the app of MCB, lets customers scan a QR code to pay a merchant, pay bills and link their account to PayPal for online payments.
Instant payments are taking off. MauCAS, the central switch run by the Bank of Mauritius, routes payments between banks and non-bank providers 24 hours a day. After the Bank removed charges on person-to-person transfers and raised the transaction limit from Rs100,000 to Rs250,000 in 2024, its instant payment system handled 19.4 million transactions worth Rs63.0 billion in the year to June 2025, up 95.4%. Eleven banks and four non-banks take part. The Bank launched the MauCAS QR code in September 2021 and is developing MauCAS Pay ID aliases and merchant-initiated QR payments.
A domestic card scheme is starting. In February 2024 the Bank launched the MauCAS-RuPay co-branded card as the national domestic card scheme, so far with two issuing banks, one point-of-sale acquirer and one ATM acquirer.
What rules shape online payments in Mauritius?
VAT is 15%, and a business registers once turnover passes MUR 3 million a year. A foreign supplier above that threshold must appoint a tax representative with a permanent establishment in Mauritius, and a customer counts as being in Mauritius when at least two indicators, such as billing address, bank location, device location or phone country code, point there.
Digital services now carry VAT. From 1 January 2026, VAT applies to specified digital or electronic services supplied in Mauritius, and foreign suppliers of those services must register for VAT whatever their turnover, file returns and list their taxable supplies. They do not charge VAT where the reverse charge applies.
Customer data needs registration. The Data Protection Act 2017, in force since 15 January 2018 and aligned with the EU GDPR, requires every controller and processor to register with the Data Protection Commissioner and renew every three years. Data can go abroad when the controller has given the Commissioner proof of appropriate safeguards, when the person has given explicit consent after being told of the risks, or in other listed cases such as performing a contract.
How would Omno route payments in Mauritius?
A merchant would connect once and set routing rules per method, currency and customer group. In Mauritius:
- Card pay-ins can be routed by BIN, with cascading to the next provider in the rule if one is unavailable or rejects the request.
- Apple Pay and Google Pay would be shown in the hosted checkout on supported devices and processed through providers that accept wallet tokens for Mauritian cards.
- Saved cards would be stored by Omno as tokens, so repeat customers can pay without retyping card details.
Webhooks would report the final status of every payment, the record a back office should trust before shipping an order, and the routing-decision log would show which provider handled each payment and why.
What should merchants plan for?
Plan for cards and wallets together. Banks had 2.13 million cards in circulation, and Apple Pay and Google Pay shorten checkout on phones.
Plan for VAT on digital services. Foreign suppliers of specified digital services must register in Mauritius from 2026, whatever their turnover.
Plan for data registration. Register with the Data Protection Commissioner and document the safeguards for any transfer of customer data abroad.
Plan for instant payments. MauCAS volumes nearly doubled in a year, and merchant QR payments are under development.