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, Yemen report}. 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, Yemen report}. 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, Yemen report}.

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) ^{Yemen report}
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, Yemen report}:

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 ^{Yemen report}:

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 ^{Yemen report}.

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, Yemen report}.

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 ^{Yemen report}.

vs. closed-loop bank wallets (SIB UPI 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, Yemen report}.

Status

Active and one of Yemen's primary mobile wallets ^{3, Yemen report}. 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 ^{Yemen report}.

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

TIIB Launches the Multipurpose Mahfathati Service — Tadhamon Bank news
Mahfathati — Tadhamon Bank affiliates
Mahfathati-Tadhamon — Apple App Store
Mahfathati-Tadhamon — Google Play
Tadhamon International Islamic Bank — official site
Top Mobile Payment Apps in Yemen — Ezee Payment
[YE-yemen.md (in-corpus country report)]^{Yemen report}

Deployments

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

YE — YE-yemen.md