How does a NAPS payment work?
The shopper chooses QPay, often labelled NAPS or debit card, at checkout and is redirected to the QPay page. There they enter their card details and confirm the payment with a one-time password sent by SMS and their card PIN, the two-step check QNB described when it began offering QPay to its online merchants. QPay then returns the shopper to the merchant’s page, and the provider reports the final status. Card details never touch the merchant’s site.
Payments are in Qatari riyals only. Mastercard’s documentation lists QPay as a debit switch gateway that supports purchase, refund and partial refund, and only the direct sale model: authorise then capture is not available, so a store that ships later takes payment at checkout and uses a partial refund if part of the order cannot be fulfilled. Tap asks merchants to open the QPay page as a full redirect, not inside an iframe, and its sample payment expires after 30 minutes if the shopper does not finish.
To accept QPay, a merchant needs a merchant account with a QPay member, which issues a QPay merchant ID and credentials, and then registers them with its gateway provider. The Qatar Central Bank lists eight Qatari banks and three payment companies, Sadad, DIBSY and TESS, as QPay members. Behind the gateway, the NAPS switch routes each debit transaction between the merchant’s bank and the card-issuing bank and settles them in central bank money.
Why does NAPS matter for merchants?
It is how Qatar residents pay with their bank accounts. The Qatar Central Bank describes QPay as the central gateway, launched in 2005, that processes debit and prepaid cards issued by banks in Qatar for e-commerce with merchants in Qatar. Central bank statistics count 12.7 million online card transactions in August 2026, up from 9.4 million a year earlier.
Himyan rides on the same rails. The central bank’s own card brand launched as a prepaid card in March 2023 and as a debit card in March 2024, issued by seven banks including QNB, Doha Bank and Qatar Islamic Bank. Himyan payments are processed locally over NAPS, which the central bank said would mean lower fees for issuers, acquirers and merchants, and online purchases go through QPay. One QPay route covers both card brands.
QPay also sits under wallets. The central bank says NAPS processes tokenised Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and Google Pay transactions, and that QPay enables tokenised wallet payments for NAPS and Himyan cards. Mastercard’s gateway sends Apple Pay debit payments in Qatar to QPay, so a merchant without a QPay route loses both the local card form and Apple Pay for Qatari debit cards.
It is no longer only for cards. The central bank lists cardless payments among QPay’s services: from a bank account through the Fawran instant payment system or Tahweel, and from a mobile wallet through Qatar Mobile Payment. Fawran handled 4.0 million transfers worth QAR 6.9 billion in August 2026, about twice the volume of a year earlier.
What can go wrong?
Foreign shoppers cannot use it. QPay covers cards issued by banks in Qatar, so visitors, expatriates with cards from home and shoppers paying by credit card need a Visa and Mastercard card form next to it.
Redirect flows lose shoppers. A missing SMS code, a forgotten PIN or a closed tab can leave the merchant without a browser result, so the server-side status, not the redirect, should decide whether an order is paid. Mastercard’s documentation tells merchants to treat a timed-out QPay payment as declined.
The national network can fail. In July 2025 the central bank reported a technical fault that disrupted NAPS for about two hours; credit cards and Fawran kept working.
Refunds have limits. Mastercard’s documentation says QPay refunds cannot be issued more than 90 days after the purchase date, and Apple Pay debit payments through QPay can only be refunded in full. Chargebacks are listed as not applicable, so disputes are handled between the shopper, their bank and the merchant, and clear order and delivery records matter.
How would Omno handle NAPS?
QPay would be presented in the hosted checkout as a redirect to the QPay page, or through Direct Links for merchants with their own checkout. Payment status would be tracked from pending to final, and the final result would arrive by webhook, which is the source of truth for releasing an order. PSP eligibility rules could send Qatari debit Apple Pay tokens only to routes that process them through QPay, while BIN rules send credit and foreign cards to a card provider. In the hosted checkout, if one QPay route is unavailable or rejects the request, the payment would cascade to the next QPay route in the rule until one accepts. The routing-decision log records which provider handled each payment and why.