Established by Saudi Central Bank (SAMA), it connects all ATM and point of-sale (PoS) terminals throughout the country to a central payment switch, which in turn re-routes the financial transactions to the card issuer (local bank, Visa, American Express or MasterCard).

In cooperation with global payment systems such as Visa, MasterCard, and Maestro, mada allows access to millions of ATMs and POS terminals worldwide.

[2] The network had been upgraded to SPAN2, which is compliant with EMV standards and implements a higher capacity infrastructure and therefore less processing time, especially at POS terminals, which solved a major problem of the first-generation SPAN system.

Atheer is an NFC payment service for Mada cards, while Naqd allows cardholders to withdraw cash directly from merchants without visiting an ATM or bank.

This allows Mada, Mastercard, and Visa cards issued by banks or e-wallets in Saudi Arabia to be added to the application.