Saudi Payments Network

The Saudi Payments Network (الشبكة السعودية للمدفوعات) or mada (مدى, formerly SPAN) is the major payment system in Saudi Arabia. Established by Saudi Central Bank (SAMA), it connects all ATM and point of-sale (PoS) terminals throughout the country to a central payment switch, which in turn re-routes the financial transactions to the card issuer (local bank, Visa, American Express or MasterCard). All banks in Saudi Arabia are required by the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) to issue ATM cards that are fully compatible with the network. All services are provided to the customer free of charge, regardless of the ATM that is used, its operator, or the customer's card issuer.

Mada provides its services through over than 17,000 ATM machines and over 225,000 POS terminals in the Kingdom. In cooperation with global payment systems such as Visa, MasterCard, and Maestro, mada allows access to millions of ATMs and POS terminals worldwide.

The network has recently been upgraded to SPAN2, which is compliant with EMV standards and implements a higher capacity infrastructure and therefore less processing time, especially at POS terminals, which solves a major problem of the first-generation SPAN system.

Member banks in the network

 * 1) Al-Rajhi Bank
 * 2) Al Bilad Bank
 * 3) Arab National Bank
 * 4) Bank AlJazira
 * 5) Emirates International Bank
 * 6) National Commercial Bank
 * 7) Riyad Bank
 * 8) SABB
 * 9) AlAwal Bank
 * 10) Banque Saudi Fransi
 * 11) Saudi Investment Bank
 * 12) Samba Financial Group
 * 13) National Bank of Kuwait
 * 14) Bank Muscat
 * 15) National Bank of Bahrain
 * 16) Alinma Bank
 * 17) Gulf International Bank