Islamic credit cards in Qatar

The market

Four full Islamic banks issue consumer credit cards in Qatar: Qatar Islamic Bank (QIB), Qatar International Islamic Bank (QIIB), AlRayan Bank (Masraf Al Rayan) and Dukhan Bank. There are no Islamic windows at conventional banks - QCB ordered them closed in 2011 (see key_rules). QIB describes itself as the first Islamic bank to operate in Qatar, from 1982, and the largest today. Two distinct card economics coexist in the market: (1) a 1% MONTHLY PROFIT RATE on the unpaid balance, used by QIB, AlRayan and QIIB, all with a 45-day profit-free period and a 5% minimum payment; and (2) a FIXED MONTHLY FEE scaled to the credit limit, used by Dukhan, charged only when the minimum-payment option is used and nil when the balance is paid in full, with a 3% minimum payment. The dominant named contract is INTERNATIONAL MURABAHA - a commodity/metal-portfolio murabaha with a one-month maturity, explicitly documented by both QIB (Cards T&C clauses 25-26) and AlRayan (credit card T&C 3.6-3.7). Dukhan is the exception, naming Qard Al Hasan plus Ujrah. QIIB names no contract publicly. Note that this is NOT the Ujrah-dominant pattern of the UAE, nor Malaysia's Bai' al-Inah, which AAOIFI prohibits.

Who decides what is compliant

There is no single national Shariah authority in Qatar equivalent to the UAE's Higher Shariah Authority. Each Islamic bank appoints its own Shari'ah Supervisory Board, whose ruling prevails over Qatari law where the two conflict in the bank's own contracts (AlRayan credit card T&C 11.18: 'These terms and conditions shall be governed by the laws of Qatar save to the extent they conflict with the principles and rules of the Islamic Shari'ah, as determined by the Shari'ah Supervisory Board of the Bank, in which event the ruling of latter shall prevail'). QCB regulates Islamic banks through its Instructions to Banks and Law no. 13 of 2012 (the Law of the Qatar Central Bank and the Regulation of Financial Institutions), and invokes specific AAOIFI Shariah Standards where it wants a rule to bind - it does not appear to have adopted the AAOIFI corpus wholesale as a national framework. Note that firms licensed in the Qatar Financial Centre are regulated separately by the QFCRA, which was not examined in this research.

Rules that limit you

• ISLAMIC WINDOWS ARE CLOSED. QCB issued a circular on 1 February 2011 requiring conventional banks to stop opening new Islamic branches, stop accepting Islamic deposits and stop conducting new Islamic finance operations, and to run off their existing Islamic assets and liabilities by 31 December 2011. Banks affected included Qatar National Bank (QNB Al Islami), HSBC, Doha Bank, Commercial Bank of Qatar, Al Ahli Bank and International Bank of Qatar. Consequence for this dataset: every Shariah-compliant consumer credit card in Qatar is issued by a full Islamic bank; there is no islamic-window or conventional-islamic-sub issuer to record. CONFIDENCE: SECONDARY. QCB's own press release on this (qcb.gov.qa/english/news/pages/islamicbranchesofcommercialbank_pr.aspx) now returns 404 and the Wayback Machine was rate-limiting throughout this session, so the directive is evidenced here only from Lexology, MEED, Oxford Business Group and contemporaneous Gulf press. The downstream FACT - that QNB, Doha Bank and Commercial Bank of Qatar currently market no Shariah-compliant consumer credit card - is consistent with their live card pages.
• TAWARRUQ DEPOSITS ARE PROHIBITED (PRIMARY SOURCE). QCB Instructions to Banks, Part VII: 'Islamic banks and branches shall be prohibited to accept deposits from customers based on Tawaroq (Reverse Murabaha)', with an exception permitting Tawarruq only between banks and financial institutions for liquidity and emergencies under a written policy approved by the bank's Shariah board. QCB grounds this in 'Shariaa standard no. (30) issued by the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI)'. Circular no. 71/2008 dated 7/5/2008, effective May 2008. This governs DEPOSITS, not card financing - and it explains why the Qatari card market is built on commodity Murabaha rather than the customer-facing Tawarruq seen elsewhere in the Gulf.
• AAOIFI prohibits Bai' al-Inah (unlike Malaysia), and no Qatari issuer in this dataset uses it. The Qatari contract of choice is International Murabaha on a commodity and metal portfolio.
• Islamic banks and Islamic branches must announce their Mudaraba profit-sharing percentage at the start of each financial period and inform QCB of it (QCB Instructions to Banks, Part VII).
• Qatar levies no VAT as at the date of this research, so published card fees are the amounts charged.