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Standards/mahfathati

Mahfathati

TypeQR Wallet
PrimaryYE
MentionedYE
Completeness86%high

Mahfathati

Overview

Mahfathati (Arabic: محفظتي, "My Wallet") is the mobile e-wallet of Tadhamon International Islamic Bank (TIIB) in Yemen, providing QR-code merchant payments, P2P transfers, bill payments, mobile-operator recharge and internet-subscription payments [1, 2, 3, ye-cro]. It is licensed by the Central Bank of Yemen (CBY) and was launched as a service in February 2017 [1]; the consumer mobile application followed in September 2019 and is currently distributed under the package name com.tiib.mahfathati on Google Play and as id1463475087 on the Apple App Store [3, 4].

The app's distinguishing structural feature is its cross-wallet interoperability — Mahfathati can transfer funds directly to and from rival Yemeni wallets Jawaly, Floosak (Al-Kuraimi Bank) and One Cash, on top of moving funds in and out of conventional bank accounts and ATMs [3, ye-cro]. This positions Mahfathati as a hub inside Yemen's fragmented payment landscape rather than a closed-loop bank wallet.

History

1996 — Tadhamon International Islamic Bank (TIIB) founded under Yemen's Islamic Banks Law as a Shariah-compliant commercial bank, headquartered in Sana'a [5]. The group later spawned related subsidiaries (Tadhamon Capital in Bahrain, Tadhamon Microfinance, TadhamonPay) [5].

28 February 2017 — Mahfathati service launched by TIIB after completing "all CBY formalities and approvals", described at launch as "a method of electronic payment made by a mobile phone" supporting remittances, payments and purchases [1]. The launch explicitly opened the service to both account-holders and non-account-holders of TIIB — a deliberate strategy to extend reach beyond the bank's deposit base [1].

9 September 2019 — Mahfathati-Tadhamon iOS app v1.0 released by Tadhamon International Islamic Bank on the Apple App Store, formalising the mobile-first delivery channel [3].

2024-2025 — cross-wallet hub expansion. Successive releases consolidated interoperability with rival Yemeni wallets (Jawaly, Floosak, One Cash) and added virtual Visa Card issuance, biometric login (Face ID / Fingerprint) and SMS Mode for offline transactions — a feature aimed at Yemen's unreliable connectivity [3]. Current app version 3.1.14, released 24 April 2025 [3].

2025 — TIIB recognised as the "First Yemeni Bank to receive Global Recognition as a Top Employer", with Mahfathati continuing to feature in the bank's retail product portfolio [5].

Technical specification

Mahfathati is a mobile-app-mediated stored-value wallet with QR-code transaction surfaces; public sources do not publish a wire-format specification, so this section documents what is observable from the app, the bank's site and the Yemen country report [1, 2, 3, ye-cro].

Layer Description
Operator Tadhamon International Islamic Bank (TIIB) [1]
Regulator / authorisation Central Bank of Yemen (CBY) — launch approved via formal CBY licence in 2017 [1]
Currency YER (Yemeni rial) YE
Symbology qr-code (ISO/IEC 18004) — used for both merchant-presented payment QR and P2P receive-money QR [3]
Underlying account model Stored-value e-wallet linked optionally to TIIB bank accounts and cards; open to non-account-holders [1, 2]
Cash-in / cash-out TIIB branches and authorised agent network; transfer from TIIB account; ATM withdrawal where supported [2, 3]
Connectivity Internet OR SMS Mode for offline transactions — designed for Yemen's intermittent data coverage [3]
Authentication App PIN + biometric login (Face ID, Fingerprint) [3]
Card overlay In-app issuance of a virtual Visa Card for online purchases including international e-commerce [3]

Cross-wallet rail. Mahfathati moves funds between wallets — including non-TIIB wallets — over Yemen's domestic mobile-money network [3]:

  • Mahfathati ↔ Jawaly
  • Mahfathati ↔ Floosak (Al-Kuraimi Bank wallet)
  • Mahfathati ↔ One Cash
  • Mahfathati ↔ Yemeni bank accounts via multiple bank channels

Public sources do not document an EMVCo-MPM TLV profile, a national-QR routing switch, or a published merchant-template GUID; Yemen has no equivalent of NCHL's NEPALPAY QR or NAPAS's VietQR. QR interoperability between wallets is mediated at the application layer (Mahfathati interpreting Jawaly/Floosak/One Cash account references), not via a standardised wire format.

Use cases

Mahfathati's QR-code surface, together with its account-to-account rails, supports a wide spread of Yemeni-market use cases [2, 3, ye-cro]:

  • Merchant in-store QR payment — scan a merchant's printed Mahfathati QR at point of sale [3].
  • P2P send and receive — generate a personal receive-money QR for friends and family to scan; settles instantly between Mahfathati wallets [3].
  • Cross-wallet transfers — send money from a Mahfathati account directly to a Jawaly, Floosak or One Cash account, bridging Yemen's otherwise siloed mobile-money networks [3].
  • Mobile-operator prepaid recharge — top up SabaFon, YOU, Yemen Mobile lines from within the app [3].
  • Internet-package payment — pay for ADSL and 4G subscriptions on Aden Net, Yemen Net, Yemen 4G [3].
  • Utility and government-fee payment — water, electricity, landline phone and government fees through the bill-payment surface [3].
  • International e-commerce — issue an in-app virtual Visa Card for online and cross-border purchases [3].
  • Offline payment via SMS Mode — execute transactions when data connectivity is unavailable, a feature pitched at Yemen's frequent power and network outages [3].
  • Agent cash-in/cash-out — load and unload the wallet through TIIB branches and the bank's authorised agent network, including for the unbanked population [2].

Implementations & ecosystem

There are no public open-source encoders or SDKs for Mahfathati; integration is closed and routed through the bank. The implementation surface is the two distributed apps and the bank's behind-the-counter merchant onboarding [3, 4].

Distributed apps (closed-source):

App Platform Publisher Bundle / ID Latest version Released Size
Mahfathati-Tadhamon iOS Tadhamon International Islamic Bank id1463475087 3.1.14 24 Apr 2025 130.9 MB [3]
Mahfathati-Tadhamon Android Tadhamon International Islamic Bank com.tiib.mahfathati latest in Google Play active — [4]

Adjacent TIIB / group products (not the same wallet, but share the Tadhamon brand) [5]:

  • Tadhamon Mobile — TIIB's general mobile-banking app for account-holders (separate from Mahfathati).
  • Madhmon — TIIB-affiliated digital service.
  • TadhamonPay — the group's payment services brand.
  • Tadhamon Capital — Bahrain-based investment subsidiary.

Yemeni-market peers documented alongside Mahfathati in the country report YE:

  • Floosak (Al-Kuraimi Bank)
  • One Cash
  • Jawaly
  • Cash E-Wallet (multi-bank)
  • YCB Mobile (Yemen Commercial Bank)
  • CAC Mobile (Cooperative & Agricultural Credit Bank)

No central national-QR scheme is documented for Yemen — the cross-wallet interop is bilateral / application-layer rather than via a CBY-mandated TLV standard YE.

Comparison

vs. other Yemeni mobile wallets (floosak / Al-Kuraimi, One Cash, Jawaly, YCB Mobile, CAC Mobile) — Mahfathati's differentiator is TIIB's Islamic-banking pedigree plus the cross-wallet bridging that lets it move funds out to rival networks; competing wallets are mostly closed loops within their issuing bank's customer base [3, ye-cro].

vs. national-mandated QR schemes (upi-qr, vietqr, nepalpay-qr, qris, tr-qr-code) — those rest on a central-bank-issued TLV standard with a national routing switch. Yemen has no such mandated national QR standard in the public record; Mahfathati's cross-wallet rail substitutes bilateral integrations for centralised orchestration YE.

vs. closed-loop bank wallets (sib-qr, etc.) — most bank-issued QR products only collect into their own settlement bank. Mahfathati's published feature set includes outbound transfers to Floosak/Jawaly/One Cash, making it functionally closer to a payments-aggregator app than a bank-only wallet [3].

Fun facts

SMS Mode for offline payments. Mahfathati ships a dedicated SMS Mode that lets users execute transactions without an internet connection — a feature designed explicitly for Yemen's chronic power and connectivity disruptions [3]. Few national QR products elsewhere advertise an SMS fallback as a first-class feature.

Open from day one to non-customers. The CBY-approved launch announcement in February 2017 went out of its way to state that Mahfathati serves "the public with or without accounts at TIIB" — explicitly inviting people without a TIIB bank account to use the wallet, in a market where most bank wallets are closed loops [1].

The wallet predates the app by ~2½ years. Mahfathati launched as a service on 28 February 2017, but the iOS app's first public release on the App Store is 9 September 2019 — meaning that for over two years the product ran via SMS, USSD, agent network and merchant onboarding before the consumer iOS app ever shipped [1, 3].

Cross-wallet hub in a country with no national QR scheme. Where Vietnam has VietQR, Nepal has NEPALPAY QR / Fonepay, and Türkiye has TR Karekod centralising interoperability, Yemen has none — Mahfathati instead achieved interoperability bilaterally, listing Jawaly, Floosak and One Cash as supported counterparties on top of multi-bank account transfers [3, ye-cro].

Status

Active and one of Yemen's primary mobile wallets [3, ye-cro]. The iOS app is at version 3.1.14 (24 April 2025) and the Android app is live on Google Play; both carry the Tadhamon International Islamic Bank publisher identity [3, 4]. The Yemen country corpus lists Mahfathati alongside Floosak and One Cash as one of the country's principal wallet rails, with QR support and broad bill-payment coverage YE.

No deprecation is indicated. TIIB continues to feature Mahfathati on its retail-banking and affiliate pages [2, 5] and the 2025 "Top Employer" recognition for TIIB indicates the parent institution is in good standing [5].

Sources

  1. TIIB Launches the Multipurpose Mahfathati Service — Tadhamon Bank news
  2. Mahfathati — Tadhamon Bank affiliates
  3. Mahfathati-Tadhamon — Apple App Store
  4. Mahfathati-Tadhamon — Google Play
  5. Tadhamon International Islamic Bank — official site
  6. Top Mobile Payment Apps in Yemen — Ezee Payment
  7. YE-yemen.md (in-corpus country report)

Deployments

Found in the following country reports (grep across reports/countries/):

source · docs/standards/mahfathati/index.md