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  • Merchant Service Providers (MSPs)

    A Merchant Service Provider (MSP) is a company or agent that provides a full suite of merchant services and support within the context of POS installation and on-going maintenance. This agent is nominated by one of the acquiring banks in the KSA where it should be registered and approved by SAMA before being allowed to provide such commercial activity.

    SAMA has issued the MSP Registration Rules and Procedures applicable to MSPs contracted by member banks. This document clearly states the responsibilities of each party in the relationship. These rules also apply to existing authorized POS terminal resellers/distributors that provide merchant support.

    For further details on this issue, please contact one of the member banks that offer POS acquiring banking services.

    Terminal certifications

    The procedure for the Security Certification of POS terminals sets out the conditions that vendors of POS terminals must fulfil in order to qualify for an approval certificate issued by the General Department of Payment Systems (GDPS) and SAMA.

    Terminal certification in general includes testing the entire cycle from the POS terminal system through acquiring banks to the card issuers. The procedure is applied by the only authorized certification laboratory managed by GDPS. All certifications are handled based on the rules set by EMVCo (Europay, MasterCard, and Visa).

    mada cards work at a wide variety of POS terminals that have been certified by the GDPS Quality Assurance Team. To find out more, please contact certification@sama.gov.sa

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