Qiwa Platform Management & Contract Authentication

Yes. Employment contracts for staff at Saudi establishments must be registered and authenticated through Qiwa. An unauthenticated contract leaves the employer in a weak position in any labour dispute, because the platform record is what the authority refers to.

The contract stays unauthenticated until the underlying issue is fixed. Common causes are a mismatch between the contract profession and the work permit, salary figures inconsistent with what is filed elsewhere, or missing establishment data. Resubmitting without diagnosing the cause simply repeats the rejection.

Yes, and you should. Historic staff whose contracts were never registered are a common finding when we audit a new client's establishment. Bulk authentication clears that exposure.

The establishment retains ownership of the account. We operate under delegated access, which means you keep control and visibility and can revoke access at any point — an arrangement we recommend over handing credentials to any provider, including us.

The establishment file is your company's record on MHRSD's labour platform, and it carries everything other labour transactions are checked against: entity data and activities, your Nitaqat band, documented employment contracts, work permits, sponsorship transfers and profession changes, and the Saudization and wage protection certificates. When a transaction fails somewhere else, stale establishment data is one of the first places to look, because downstream services read this record rather than your own files.

Five things at once, per MHRSD's 2026 procedural guide for the developed Nitaqat programme: requesting new visas, issuing work permits for new expatriate hires, renewing the permits of the expatriate staff you already employ, changing an employee's profession, and transferring worker services in from another establishment. MHRSD's work permit service page states it plainly — licences cannot be issued or renewed if the facility is in the red zone. The compounding problem is that you cannot replace the people you cannot keep, so the ratio moves against you every month you stay there.

MHRSD prices work permit issuance and renewal at SAR 100, paid through SADAD, and gives the processing time as immediate. The establishment must issue the permit within the first 90 days after the employee enters the Kingdom, and renewal is allowed once 180 days or less remain before expiry. The monthly expatriate levy is charged on top of that fee, and Qiwa's work permit page publishes it as part of the permit's cost: SAR 100 a year for each non-Saudi employee, plus SAR 700 a month for each non-Saudi employee up to the number of Saudi employees in the establishment and SAR 800 a month for each one beyond that.

Yes. The contract is created and documented on Qiwa and the employee can approve it, reject it, or request an amendment from their own account, so authentication is not something the employer completes alone. MHRSD sets two conditions on the establishment side: the establishment must be running, and the employee must not already hold a valid contract on the platform. That second condition is what usually blocks a new hire whose previous employer never closed their record.

Both are issued from the Certificates screen under Establishment Management in Qiwa Business; the service is free and completes immediately. The wage protection certificate carries conditions — a compliance rate of 70% or higher over the past 12 months, or 50% or higher for a newly established entity — and Qiwa states it is valid for one month from the date of issuance, so if a tender or a bank asks for a current certificate, check the issue date before sending it. A late wage file also suspends issuance of the Saudization certificate.