How to Connect Your Software to a Payment Gateway in Saudi Arabia: Moyasar vs Tap vs HyperPay

Connecting your software or online store to a payment gateway in Saudi Arabia takes seven steps: open a merchant account with a commercial registration or freelance licence and a Saudi bank account, get your test keys, pick an integration method (a ready plugin, a hosted payment form or a direct API), send amounts in halalas, confirm every payment from your server rather than the browser, test with test cards, then switch to live keys. Between Moyasar, Tap and HyperPay, all three accept mada and Apple Pay; they differ in extra payment methods, countries, developer tools and how fast the money arrives. Neither Moyasar nor HyperPay publishes a fixed price; their sales teams set it based on your volume.

First: check the gateway is licensed by SAMA

The Saudi Central Bank licenses payment service providers under the Implementing Regulations of the Payments and Payment Services Law, issued on 13 June 2023. As of SAMA's announcement of 22 July 2026, 33 companies were licensed to provide payment services. All three gateways in this guide hold a licence:

• Moyasar: licensed by SAMA on 1 March 2022 to provide e-commerce payment services, as the 16th licensed company (SAMA announcement).
• HyperPay: the company says SAMA granted it a licence for e-wallet solutions, bringing the number of licensed companies at the time to 27 (HyperPay announcement).
• Tap: the company's statement says it holds a SAMA payment institution licence and that mada certified its gateway technology (Tap statement).

Whichever gateway you choose, look its name up on SAMA's website before you sign, because the central bank itself asks businesses to deal only with licensed providers.

Full comparison: Moyasar vs Tap vs HyperPay

We built this comparison from each company's official pages and developer documentation as they stood on 2 November 2026:

Sources: Moyasar FAQ and Moyasar docs, Tap developer docs and Tap's payout support page, HyperPay website, its FAQ and integration guide.

Which gateway fits your software?

• You sell only in Saudi Arabia and want to start fast: Moyasar focuses on Saudi Arabia, documents in Arabic and English, and its payment form works with a few lines of code.
• You sell across the Gulf or want instalments: Tap's docs cover KNET and Benefit, and Tabby, Tamara and Deema through the same gateway.
• A large company or one working in several Arab countries: HyperPay operates in 8 countries and offers mada pre-authorisation, useful for hotels and car rental when you hold an amount and capture it later.
• A platform or marketplace with many sellers: all three offer a tool to split funds between sellers, so compare them in the same quote.

Do not choose on price alone. Ask each company in writing for the mada rate, the credit card rate, the fixed fee per transaction, refund fees and settlement time, then run them against one real month of your own sales.

Step-by-step integration guide

1. Open a merchant account. Moyasar asks for a commercial registration or freelance licence and a Saudi bank account linked to it, and reviews the store itself: products, images, prices and policies. Approval usually takes 2 to 5 business days once documents are complete.
2. Get your test keys. All three give you a sandbox. At Tap the keys sit in the dashboard under API credentials, and mobile apps get special keys bound to the iOS bundle ID or Android package ID. Keep the secret key on your server only, never inside the app or the web page.
3. Pick an integration method. If your store runs on WooCommerce or Magento, the ready plugin is the fastest route. For custom software, start with a hosted payment form: the Moyasar form or HyperPay's COPYandPAY. These forms send card data straight to the gateway, so it never touches your server and your PCI DSS burden shrinks. A direct server-to-server integration gives you more control but more security responsibility.
4. Send amounts in halalas. At Moyasar, SAR 10 is written as 1000, and the minimum is 100 halalas. A mistake in this field means your customer pays a hundred times too much or a hundredth of the price.
5. Confirm payment from your server. Do not mark an order paid because the customer landed on the success page; that URL can be forged. Query the payment status from your server and receive the webhook. HyperPay's docs warn that webhooks can be delayed by several minutes in rare cases, so query the status directly when you need it in real time. Tie every payment attempt to one order number so a retry does not charge the customer twice. At HyperPay a checkout session expires after 30 minutes at most.
6. Test failure before success. Moyasar's test cards include 8 mada cards: one succeeds and 7 fail for different reasons such as insufficient funds, an expired card or a stolen one. Make sure your software shows a clear message for each, releases the booking or restocks the item, then test full and partial refunds.
7. Go live. Swap the keys, pay a small real transaction yourself, refund it, and watch the first week: the success rate, and when the money reached your account.

Mistakes that cost you money

• Storing card data in your database. You do not need it; the gateway keeps a token for you if you want recurring payments.
• Expecting the money the same day. At Tap, mada funds arrive within 3 working days and cards within 5, so plan your cash flow accordingly.
• Forgetting the refund path. A customer waits 7 to 14 business days for a credit card refund at Moyasar, so tell them, or they may open a dispute with their bank.
• A long checkout page. Every extra field loses a buyer; our checkout UX guide shows how to cut cart abandonment.

If you want the basics first, read integrating mada, Apple Pay and STC Pay into your app. If you run a shop and are thinking about taking payments on a phone, read what we know about Tap to Pay in Saudi Arabia. At Origami we connect companies' software and stores to payment gateways and test the integration before launch; contact us if you would like us to handle it.