Digital Payments & Fintech - Lebanon

Banque du Liban (BDL) is the exclusive regulator and licensor for all entities conducting electronic payment, money-transfer, or banking activities. Banks, financial institutions, and any third party must obtain prior BDL authorisation before offering digital payment services.

Basic Decision No. 13790 of 9 January 2026 comprehensively overhauled the EPSP/wallet and money-transfer licensing regime, setting out capital requirements (LBP 2 billion deposited at BDL), IT/cybersecurity governance standards, and a six-month compliance transition for previously licensed non-bank institutions.

Law No. 81/2018 on Electronic Transactions and Personal Data provides the statutory basis for e-payments, digital money transfers, bank cards, and electronic cheques, vesting BDL with authority to license and regulate digital-money operations; it also establishes data-protection obligations applicable to fintechs.

BDL operates both payment rails: BDL-RTGS (launched July 2012) for large-value real-time interbank settlement, and BDL-CLEAR (November 2013) for retail/automated clearing. Licensed fintech e-wallets plug into this infrastructure for P2P transfers, bill payments, remittances, and QR-code purchases.

Lebanon has no open-banking mandate, no separate e-money institution (EMI) licence class, and no dedicated BNPL rules. Most non-bank payment service providers operate under BDL-issued licences as money-exchange or wallet companies rather than under a purpose-built PSP or EMI authorisation framework.

Basic Circular No. 69 (2000) remains the foundational BDL instrument for electronic banking and financial transactions, requiring licensed institutions to meet IT-security, business-continuity (Basic Decision No. 10227/2009), and cybercrime-prevention (Basic Circular No. 144/2017) standards as a precondition for digital payment operations.