Dubai Islamic Bank (DIB) has recently announced the launch of its first Islamic Credit Card with the support of Card Tech Limited, a leading UK-based bankcard systems provider and processor.

The new "Alislami Credit Card" (The Islamic Credit Card), offered in Visa Classic, Gold, Gold Executive and Platinum, will provide DIB customers with all the benefits of a conventional credit card whilst ensuring that all payments and repayments are fully compliant with Islamic Sharia'a principles.

Islamic banking is a worldwide market requirement for many banks, and a prerequisite that CTL's PRIME and ONLINE systems can fully support. The successful implementation demonstrates CTL's full systems compliance with the Islamic banking principles according to the specific requirements of the bank's Sharia'a Committee.

It is fortunate that CTL's ability to speedily implement has successfully enabled DIB to celebrate this launch in conjunction with the bank's 30 years of service offering to the Islamic banking world."

DIB has been a client of CTL since 1991 when it selected CTL's CARDMAN Issuer system to manage its credit card portfolio. The bank migrated to CTL's industry-leading PRIME and ONLINE platform in 1999, and has since used it to issue over 25,000 Visa Charge Cards and approximately 300,000 Visa Electron Cards.

Edith Kessler-Charalambous, General Manager Business Expansion at CTL, said "We are happy to see that our clients can benefit from CTL's forward-looking product policy. Islamic banking is not a negligible or merely temporary phenomenon - on the contrary we anticipate considerable growth in this sector and will strive to effectively meet the needs of this market segment"