Digital Payment Solutions: Types, Uses and How They Fit Together

Digital payment solutions are the services a business uses to take, send and manage money without cash. The main types are payment gateways for online checkout, digital wallets, buy now pay later (BNPL), card terminals and SoftPOS, payment links and online invoices, bill payment, payouts and spend management. Most businesses use several of them side by side.

In Saudi Arabia, cash is now the exception at the till. SAMA reports that electronic payments made up 85% of retail payments in 2025, on 14.6 billion transactions through the national payment systems. The question for a business is which type does which job, and where they overlap.

The last two figures come from the 2025 Global Digital Shopping Index, Saudi Arabia edition, commissioned by Visa Acceptance Solutions and run by PYMNTS Intelligence with 2,191 consumers and 240 merchants in the Kingdom. The global averages were 55% and 48%.

What counts as a digital payment solution?

A digital payment solution is any service that moves money electronically between a customer, a business and its partners. The simplest way to sort them is by the job they do: collecting online, collecting in person, collecting on request, collecting bills, paying out, and controlling or protecting spend. The table maps each type.

How fast is Saudi Arabia moving to digital payments?

The electronic share of retail payments has risen every year that SAMA has reported it, from 62% in 2022 to 85% in 2025. According to Saudipedia, the 2022 figure already beat the Financial Sector Development Program’s 60% target for that year.

The 2022 and 2023 figures come from SAMA’s April 2024 announcement, which also put transactions through national payment systems at 10.8 billion in 2023, up from 8.7 billion. The 2024 and 2025 figures, and the jump from 12.6 billion to 14.6 billion transactions, come from SAMA’s April 2026 release.

Card spending shows the same pattern. SAMA data reported by Okaz put 2025 point-of-sale sales at SAR 707.2 billion across 11.5 billion transactions on 2.3 million devices, while mada e-commerce sales reached SAR 325.2 billion, up 65% on 2024.

Which digital payment solutions collect money online?

Three types do most of the online work: the payment gateway that runs checkout, the digital wallets shoppers pay with, and BNPL for larger baskets. A gateway is the base layer, because wallets and BNPL options usually appear inside the same checkout page that the gateway provides.

A payment gateway collects the card or wallet details, sends them for authorization and returns the result to your store. It can be a hosted page or a form embedded in your own site. In Saudi Arabia, the company that settles card money into your account must be a SAMA-licensed payment company or a bank. Our guide on how to choose an online payment solution shows how to check that before you sign.

Wallets sit on top of cards. Apple Pay in the Kingdom works with mada cards, as SAMA’s mada page confirms, and STC Pay is a Saudi digital wallet. BNPL is a form of financing. SAMA’s Rules for Regulating BNPL Companies, issued on 17 December 2023, define it as letting a consumer buy without a term cost and state that the activity needs a SAMA license. The same rules require BNPL companies to stop their partner stores from passing any extra fees on to the shopper. For the merchant, BNPL shows up as another button at checkout, with the BNPL company carrying the credit decision.

Which solutions take payments in person?

In-person digital payments run on card terminals, and increasingly on phones. A traditional terminal reads chip and contactless cards. SoftPOS turns an ordinary smartphone into the terminal, which suits businesses that move around or only need one or two payment points. Both accept the same mada and international cards.

SAMA lists both routes among mada services: point-of-sale devices, mada Atheer contactless payments by card or phone, and a point-of-sale application on Android devices that lets merchants accept mada and international cards without dedicated hardware. Shoppers can also tap with Apple Pay or the mada Pay wallet for Android.

SoftPOS fits food trucks, delivery drivers, tutors, pop-up stands and event sellers. HyperTap is HyperPay’s contactless POS app for this use: download the app, register the business and start accepting tap payments without extra hardware, with payments tracked in the app.

How do payment links, invoices and bill payments differ?

All three collect money after the sale has been agreed, which is why they get confused. A payment link is a one-off request. An online invoice is a formal bill with line items that the customer can pay online. Bill payment through SADAD is a national system that connects registered billers with banks and wallets.

Online invoicing suits service businesses, B2B sellers and anyone selling through social media without a store. With HyperBill, a business creates an invoice, sends it by SMS, email or WhatsApp, and the customer pays on a secure page. It handles one-time and recurring bills and does not require a website. If you also issue tax invoices under ZATCA rules, that compliance stays with your e-invoicing system and HyperBill handles the collection; our guide to e-invoicing in Saudi Arabia covers the ZATCA side.

SADAD, launched in 2004 and owned by SAMA, lets customers view and pay bills through all banking channels and licensed digital wallets. It also processes refunds for bills paid through SADAD and gives billers reports on reconciled and settled payments. Through a payment provider that supports it, SADAD can also appear as an option at checkout.

How do businesses pay money out digitally?

Paying out is the mirror image of collecting. Marketplaces, delivery apps, ticketing platforms and fundraising sites all collect from customers and then owe money to sellers, drivers or organizers. Doing that by manual bank transfer breaks down quickly once there are hundreds of payees, so these businesses use a payouts API or batch tool.

HyperSplit is HyperPay’s payouts API for marketplaces. The business sends transaction details through the API or the online dashboard, and HyperSplit passes them to the financial institution so each beneficiary is paid into their bank account. It is built for sellers, couriers, drivers and partners.

At national level, sarie, launched by SAMA in 2021, carries instant transfers of up to SAR 20,000 between local banks, 24 hours a day. It accepts identifiers such as a mobile number or national ID in place of an IBAN, and for transfers of up to SAR 2,500 the sender does not have to add the beneficiary first.

How do the pieces fit together for different businesses?

No business needs every type. The right set depends on where customers pay and whether money also flows out to partners. The combinations below are common starting points in Saudi Arabia, built around a gateway or terminal and extended as the business adds channels.

Fraud screening, analytics and spend management sit alongside all of these set-ups. None of them moves customer money on its own. Most businesses add them once transaction volume grows.

Hotels have extra requirements around deposits and property management systems; our hotel payment and PMS integration guide covers them.

How do HyperPay’s products map to these categories?

If you need more than one of these types, we recommend running them through HyperPay. It covers most of the map with separate products under one licensed provider, so you deal with one contract, one onboarding and one security standard instead of stitching several vendors together. HyperPay is listed on SAMA’s register as an Electronic Money Institution (unified number 7016872546), holds Saudi Payments permits as a PTSP and an eMSP Payment Gateway, and is certified to PCI DSS v4.0.1 Level 1, ISO/IEC 27001:2022 and ISO 22301.

A common path is to start with HyperPay Payments for online checkout, add HyperTap when you begin selling in person, and add HyperSplit once other sellers or drivers need paying. For the details of the Kingdom’s main debit network, see what merchants need to know about mada cards.

Frequently asked questions

What are examples of digital payment solutions?

Common examples are payment gateways for online checkout, digital wallets such as Apple Pay and STC Pay, buy now pay later services such as Tabby and Tamara, card terminals and SoftPOS apps, payment links and online invoices, SADAD bill payment, payouts APIs for marketplaces, and corporate card platforms for spend management.

What is the difference between a payment gateway and a digital wallet?

A payment gateway is the merchant-side service that captures payment details at checkout and sends them for authorization. A digital wallet is the customer-side tool, such as Apple Pay, that stores a tokenized card on a phone. Wallet payments still pass through the merchant’s gateway to reach the bank.

Is buy now pay later regulated in Saudi Arabia?

Yes. SAMA issued the Rules for Regulating Buy-Now-Pay-Later Companies on 17 December 2023 under the Finance Companies Control Law. The rules state that BNPL activity may only be carried out after obtaining a SAMA license. Merchants offer BNPL through their payment provider at checkout.

What is SoftPOS?

SoftPOS is software that lets a merchant accept contactless card and phone payments on an ordinary smartphone instead of a dedicated terminal. SAMA lists a point-of-sale application on Android devices among mada services. It suits mobile sellers, delivery drivers and small shops that need one or two payment points.

What share of payments in Saudi Arabia are digital?

SAMA reports that electronic payments made up 85% of retail payments in Saudi Arabia in 2025, up from 79% in 2024, 70% in 2023 and 62% in 2022. Transactions through the national payment systems reached 14.6 billion in 2025, compared with 12.6 billion in 2024.

Are digital payments safe for businesses?

Yes, when the provider is licensed and certified. Wallets such as Apple Pay replace the card number with a token, mada online payments run over 3-D Secure, and SoftPOS apps such as HyperTap encrypt each transaction. On the business side, choose a SAMA-licensed provider with current PCI DSS certification and add real-time fraud screening as volume grows.

If you want online checkout, SoftPOS, invoicing and payouts from one SAMA-licensed provider, talk to the HyperPay team at hyperpay.com and tell us which of these you need first.