The Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) is pleased to announce that its Shari’ah Board has approved and issued a new Shari’ah standard titled “Payment Cards” (Shari’ah Standard 61). The standard, which has been developed in cooperation with the international card company Visa, is now available for access on AAOIFI’s website to all stakeholders, including Islamic financial institutions, regulatory bodies, practitioners, professionals, scholars, the academia and the broader industry.

The issuance of this new standard culminated the efforts exerted by the board and its drafting committee and the General Secretariat which aimed to fulfil all the requirements of the due process towards the final stage of development.

This included the contributions of the research team that conducted the preliminary study and the standard’s first draft, the advisory committee that discussed and fine-tuned the draft, before submission to the Sharia board for its elaboration and approval. The due process also included the essential public hearing stage whereby the Secretariat was able to reach out to the broader industry for comments and feedback on the exposure draft of the standard.

On this occasion, AAOIFI would like to extend special thanks and appreciation to all those who contributed towards development and final issuance of this standard, particularly its Shari’ah Board and respective committees, hosts of the public hearings, and all the experts and scholars who took part at the different stages of the due process.

According to the Shariah Board’s new approach, any new standard that supersedes an existing standard or brings about fundamental changes to such a standard will be assigned a new number, without affecting the order of standards where the numbers assigned to any phased-out standards will remain unchanged, similar to the relevant professional standards, including AAOIFI’s approach to developing its accounting standards.

The link to download the standard in Arabic is: https://bit.ly/2UZxghx