Contract structure
You are renting the use of the card and the payment system, and the rent is the fee.
Ijarah is a lease. You can lease an object, like a car, or you can lease a service, which is what happens here. On a card, ijarah describes the bank providing you with a payment system, a card, a network, statements, security, dispute handling and a support line, and charging you rent for it. Indonesia's fatwa names this explicitly: the issuer is the provider of the payment system and services, and for that ijarah the cardholder is charged a membership fee. In practice ijarah and ujrah are used almost interchangeably in card documents, because the ujrah is simply the rent under the ijarah.
Illustrative figures, not a real product. Your card carries a membership fee of Rp 300,000 a year. That is the rent for the service. Spend nothing all year and you still owe Rp 300,000, because you leased the service and it was available to you. Spend to your full limit and you still owe Rp 300,000, because the rent is for the service, not for the money. If the figure moves when your balance moves, the ijarah label no longer describes what is happening.
Scholars do not all agree about this structure. Both positions are set out here because you are entitled to see the disagreement rather than one side of it.
Hiring services for a wage is permitted. DSN-MUI Fatwa No. 54/DSN-MUI/X/2006, clause Ketiga (c), applies ijarah to the card issuer as the provider of the payment system and services to the cardholder, and provides that for this ijarah the cardholder is charged a membership fee. Clause Kelima (a) frames the membership fee, including renewal, as ujrah for permission to use the card facility. AAOIFI Shariah Standard No. 9 covers Ijarah generally and Standard No. 34 covers the hiring of persons; AAOIFI Standard No. 2 clause 4/3 separately permits membership, renewal and replacement fees on a card.
The objection is the same as for ujrah: an ijarah is only real if there is a real service, priced as a service. If the rent varies with how much credit you use or how long you take to repay, the lease is a description rather than a transaction. Bank Negara's SAC made an adjacent point at its 78th meeting on 30 July 2008 when it held that the fiqh adaptation of a card fee onto a wakalah 'is not accurate', because the bank's role was described too narrowly to justify the fee it wanted to charge. The same test applies to ijarah: does the described service actually account for the fee?
AAOIFI does not apply an ijarah analysis to cards in Shariah Standard No. 2. It reaches a similar practical outcome by permitting membership, renewal and replacement fees at clause 4/3 and explaining at Appendix B item 6 that these are the price of the right to carry the card and use its services.
DSN-MUI · Fatwa No. 54/DSN-MUI/X/2006 on Syariah Card, clauses Ketiga (c) and Kelima (a)
Ijarah applies to the issuer's provision of the payment system and services; the cardholder pays a membership fee, framed as ujrah for permission to use the card facility.
Read the sourceAAOIFI · Shariah Standard No. (2), clause 4/3 and Appendix B item 6
Membership, renewal and replacement fees are permitted as the price of the right to carry the card and benefit from its services.
Read the source10 cards across 1 market.
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This explains the mechanism, not the ruling