MA

Mastercard Inc.

DOUBTFUL — METHODS DIFFERstock

Is MA Halal?

Mastercard does not lend or receive issuer interest, but March 2026 debt was 36.15% of assets and the network's screened transaction mix is undisclosed.

What You Should Know

Mastercard enables general-purpose payments and provides value-added services. It states that it does not issue cards, extend credit, set issuer rates or receive issuer interest and cardholder fees. The current total-assets methods fail on debt while liquidity, receivables and investment income pass. Conventional-credit facilitation and prohibited merchant transactions remain qualitative methodology questions because Mastercard does not publish a screened transaction or revenue numerator.

⚠️ Concerns

  • Debt was 36.15% of total assets
  • Network facilitates conventional credit issued by financial-institution customers
  • Screened credit, debit, prepaid, account-based and merchant-category revenue is unavailable
  • Settlement guarantees and reliance on conventional financial institutions
  • Interchange, merchant costs, competition, privacy, cybersecurity, data use and financial-inclusion concerns

Current quantitative Sharia screen

Based on 10-Q figures for the period ended 2026-03-31; calculated 2026-07-12.

USD · millions
Interest-bearing debt / assets
36.15%Above limit
Below 33.333% under FTSE Yasaar

18,960 / 52,449

Cash + interest-bearing securities / assets
15.67%Within limit
Below 33.333% under FTSE Yasaar

8,219 / 52,449

Receivables + cash / assets
24.07%Within limit
Below 50% under FTSE Yasaar

12,626 / 52,449

Non-compliant income / revenue (upper bound)
0.96%Within limit
No more than 5% under FTSE Yasaar

81 / 8,398

FTSE Yasaar
v4.6, February 2026
Financial
Fails
Overall
Fails

Debt is 36.15% of total assets, above the 33.333% limit. Liquidity is 15.67%, receivables plus cash is 24.07%, and the investment-income upper bound is 0.96%, all within their examined limits.

MSCI Islamic (total-assets series)
October 2024 methodology
Financial
Fails
Overall
Fails

Debt is above the 33.33% total-assets limit even though liquidity and receivables plus cash are below their limits.

Malaysia SAC financial ratios
single 5% activity benchmark adopted November 2025
Financial
Fails
Overall
Fails

Debt is above 33% of total assets, and a screened business-revenue percentage is unavailable. This is a calculation against the SAC ratios, not an official SAC classification of a U.S.-listed security.

Market-cap denominator methods
MSCI M-Series, S&P and Dow Jones methods differ
Financial
Not calculated
Overall
Not calculated

A properly licensed and reproducible 24- or 36-month issuer market-cap history is not yet stored, so these methods are not estimated from a current spot price.

Business-activity disclosure

Mastercard enables electronic payments and provides security, authentication, data, consulting, open-banking and other value-added services. Mastercard states that it does not issue cards, extend credit, set issuer interest rates or receive issuer interest and account-holder fees. General-purpose payment infrastructure is permissible in many uses, while facilitation of conventional credit and prohibited merchant transactions remains a methodological concern.

Limitation: The filing does not disaggregate revenue by credit, debit, prepaid, account-based payment, merchant category, prohibited transaction, or degree of involvement with issuer lending. Payment-network revenue cannot be treated as either entirely permissible or entirely prohibited from the disclosed data.

Purification

The 81 investment-income line is a conservative 0.96% upper bound of quarterly revenue. Potentially non-compliant operating revenue is not separately disclosed, so this record does not prescribe a complete fixed purification percentage.

Inputs, assumptions and primary sources
  • Interest-bearing debt uses the filing's 18,960 total debt, consisting of 1,748 classified as short term and 17,212 as long term.
  • Cash and cash equivalents use the reported 7,906 balance. Restricted customer and settlement balances are not added to freely available cash.
  • Interest-bearing securities use the 313 available-for-sale investment balance.
  • Receivables use the reported 4,720 accounts-receivable balance.
  • Revenue and the 81 investment-income line use the same three-month period ended March 31, 2026. Investment income primarily consists of interest but can include realized securities gains and losses, so it is a conservative non-compliant-income upper bound.
  • Mastercard discloses payment-network and value-added-services revenue, but not a Sharia-screened numerator by credit, debit, prepaid, account-based transaction, merchant category, issuer economics, or prohibited end use.

This is a reproducible financial screen, not a fatwa. A failed total-assets screen can coexist with a pass under a market-cap methodology. ZakatInvest keeps the qualitative assessment separate so numerical thresholds do not erase material context.

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