Credit cards on Islamic legal view

Abstract

The development of everyday financial instruments is an important dimension of modern life, and credit cards are considered to be the main instruments and facilitators of spending in modern economies. Together with the Internet, which facilitates the spending process, credit cards have become essential instruments of spending. In response to this, the development of Islamic banking and finance encourages Muslim scholars to create products which help Muslims to avoid ‘Riba’ including the issuing of Islamic credit cards. Although the practice of Islamic credit cards is still debatable among the scholars especially regarding to its contracts and effectiveness. So, this research aims to analyze the legal view of Shariah on credit cards based on Shariah principles and to examine the well suitable Islamic contract models for its fairer application among Islamic world. The researcher has taken Malaysian and Indonesian Islamic credit card models to analyze the permissibility of contracts. The research is designed as qualitative and data collected for this research are both primary and secondary sources. Primary data is collected by interview and discussion. Library references, books, journals, magazines, websites and any other banks related documents have been used as secondary data. Also this research is analyzed through comparative analyzing system. According to the data analyzed, the scholars are in different of opinions on the application of credit cards but the acceptable view is, it is permissible as long as to exclude any element of Riba (Interest).