• Europay, MasterCard and Visa (EMV) Compliance

    • OM-5.2.1

      All cards (debit, credit, charge, prepaid, etc.) issued by licensees in the Kingdom of Bahrain must be EMV compliant. Moreover, all ATMs, CDMs, POS, etc. must be EMV compliant for accepting cards issued in the Kingdom of Bahrain. In this context, EMV compliant means using chip and online PIN authentication. However, contactless card payment transactions, where no PIN verification is required, are permitted for small amounts i.e. up to BD50 per transaction, provided that Conventional bank licensees bear full responsibility in case of fraud occurrence.

      Amended: April 2023
      Added: January 2020

    • OM-5.2.1A

      Where contactless payments use Consumer Device Cardholder Verification Method (CDCVM) for payment authentication and approval, then the authentication required for transactions above BD50 limit mentioned in Paragraph OM-5.2.1 is not applicable given that the customer has already been authenticated by his device using PIN, biometric or other authentication methods. This is only applicable where debit/credit card of the customer has already been tokenized in the payment application.

      Amended: April 2023
      Added: July 2020