BankDhofar Launches Dhofar-Pay, Oman's First NFC Contactless Mobile Payment Service

BankDhofar has launched Dhofar-Pay, the first NFC-based contactless mobile payment service in the Sultanate of Oman, allowing customers to tap-to-pay directly from their NFC-enabled Android smartphones at any contactless POS terminal.

Introduced on 26 March 2024, the service lets BankDhofar customers add their existing debit card credentials to their Android device through the bank's mobile banking app. Once provisioned, the phone functions as a tokenised digital card, removing the need to carry the physical card for day-to-day spending.

A first for Oman

The launch represented a notable milestone for Oman's digital banking market, which had previously lacked a bank-led tap-to-pay offering of this kind. Dhofar-Pay uses tokenisation to protect card credentials, with each transaction authorised via a one-time cryptogram rather than the underlying card number.

Amjad Iqbal Al Lawati, Chief Retail Banking Officer at BankDhofar, said: "We always work towards making banking easier and better for our customers and Dhofar-Pay is a perfect example of that." He added that the bank's strategy continues to focus on using "the latest technology to give the best banking experience possible".

Part of a broader digital push

Alongside Dhofar-Pay, BankDhofar also rolled out new vertical-format debit cards featuring a portrait-oriented design with sensitive data hidden on the reverse for added security - a small but telling signal of the bank's appetite for reworking long-standing banking conventions.

Dhofar-Pay sits within a wider push by BankDhofar to modernise its retail banking stack and compete more aggressively on digital convenience, a theme that has since been picked up across other GCC markets as contactless payments continue to displace cash and card-present transactions.