How to Issue a Power of Attorney (Wakala) in Saudi Arabia Online via Najiz: The Expat Guide for 2026

You need someone to sell your car while you are travelling. Or your brother back home needs to handle a property matter on your behalf. Or your bank is asking for a formal authorisation before it will let a family member act on your account. In every one of these situations, what you actually need is a Wakala, the Arabic term for a power of attorney (POA): a legal document that authorises a named person to act for you within a defined scope.

For years, getting a Wakala meant booking a visit to a notary public (kateb adl) or a court, queuing, and hoping the Arabic-only counter process went smoothly. In 2026, the vast majority of personal powers of attorney in Saudi Arabia are issued fully online through Najiz, the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) e-services portal at najiz.sa. The document is created, signed, and stored electronically, and it carries the same legal weight as a notarised paper one.

The catch for many expats and residents is simple: the Najiz interface, the authority categories, and the legal phrasing are designed around Arabic. Choose the wrong authority type or the wrong scope and your POA can be technically valid but practically useless, because the bank, the traffic department, or the land registry rejects it. This guide explains exactly how the online process works in 2026, what eligibility you need, where it goes wrong, and how to manage and revoke a POA after issuing it. Where we deal with fees and edge cases, we hedge deliberately, because these change and should always be confirmed with the MOJ or on Najiz directly.

Najiz (najiz.sa) is the digital services platform of the Saudi Ministry of Justice. It is the same portal Saudis and residents use to file lawsuits, track court cases, register and verify real estate deeds, manage inheritance matters, and, most relevant here, issue and manage powers of attorney. Think of it as the single online front desk for almost everything the MOJ used to handle at a physical court or notary office.

Because Najiz is operated by the Ministry of Justice itself, a power of attorney issued through it is an official, electronically authenticated legal instrument, not a private letter you typed up. The Ministry has reported that millions of e-powers of attorney are now issued through Najiz, replacing paper notarisation at scale. Each electronic document is stored centrally and can be verified instantly by any authority, which is why banks and government bodies increasingly prefer the Najiz version over a paper one.

The important mental model: you are not printing a POA. You are creating a record inside a government system. The PDF you download is just a human-readable view of that record. What gives it force is the entry in the MOJ database, accessible by document number and verifiable by QR code. That distinction matters in practice. A printed Najiz POA that is genuine but a few months old is still backed by the live record, so if you revoke it the paper in someone's hand becomes worthless the moment the revocation is logged. The record, not the page, is the truth.

To appreciate why the Najiz route has all but replaced the counter, it helps to compare the two side by side. The old kateb adl process was not just slow, it created documents that were harder to verify and easier to dispute. The Najiz record removes most of that friction. The table below contrasts the two on the points that actually matter to an expat. Treat the fee row as directional and confirm the live position on Najiz or with the MOJ, because schedules change.

The one thing the new route does not fix on its own is the scope problem. Online, you select the category yourself, in Arabic, and the system happily issues whatever you choose. That is why a process that is technically easier can still produce a document a bank refuses, and why the rest of this guide spends so much time on getting the scope right.

The good news for residents is that you do not need to be a Saudi citizen to issue a Wakala on Najiz. What you do need:

• A valid iqama (residency permit). Your iqama must be active, not expired. If it has lapsed, sort that first; our iqama renewal guide walks through the process.
• An active Absher account. Najiz uses the National Single Sign-On, so you log in with the same credentials you use for Absher Individuals. If you have never set Absher up, start with our Absher account registration guide.
• Nafath for verification. Login is confirmed through the Nafath app, which pushes a one-time approval or code to your phone. Your Nafath and Absher identity must be correctly linked to your iqama, especially after any sponsorship change. If yours is out of sync, see our note on identity apps not updating after a transfer.
• A valid agent (wakeel). The person you authorise must also have a valid Saudi ID, either a national ID (for Saudis) or a valid iqama (for residents). You need their exact ID number as registered.

For the agent's details, accuracy is not optional. The system matches the ID number you enter against the national records, and a single wrong digit will either block the issuance or, worse, create a POA naming the wrong person. There is a subtle eligibility trap that catches recently transferred employees. If you changed sponsor and your Nafath or Absher identity has not fully synced to the new iqama, the Najiz login or the agent validation can fail with an error that looks like a portal bug but is really a stale identity record. Confirm your own identity is current before you blame the form, and resolve any sync lag first.

A POA is only as useful as the scope you give it. In practice, the requests we see most from residents fall into a handful of categories. The table below maps the common POA purposes to typical uses and the cautions that go with each. Treat the scope names as illustrative; the exact authority categories on Najiz are in Arabic and can be granular.

The single most useful habit: decide the narrowest authority that still gets the job done. A tightly scoped POA is safer for you and less likely to be challenged by the receiving party. A vehicle POA that authorises only the sale and transfer of one named car is harder to misuse, and easier for the traffic department to accept, than a sweeping authority to manage all your vehicles and assets. Receiving parties trust a POA that does exactly one thing far more readily than one that appears to hand over everything.

Issuing a POA on Najiz takes minutes if your information is in order, and an afternoon of frustration if it is not. The readiness checklist below is the difference between a clean issuance and a stalled one. Tick every row before you log in.

The row that most people skip is the written list. Walking into the portal with only a vague sense of what you want, then trying to match that feeling to an Arabic authority category on the fly, is precisely how the wrong scope gets chosen. Write it down in plain language first: who, may do what, with which asset or at which institution, for how long. If you also have an iqama, dependent fees, or exit and re-entry matters in play at the same time, our Saudi iqama cost calculator can help you sanity-check what else is due before someone acts on your behalf.

The exact labels on the portal are in Arabic and the MOJ updates the interface periodically, so treat the following as the flow rather than a pixel-perfect script. In 2026 the path looks like this:

• Step 1 - Log in. Go to najiz.sa and choose the National Single Sign-On (Absher Individuals). Enter your iqama number and Absher password, then approve the login in Nafath.
• Step 2 - Open the POA service. Navigate to the electronic services, then to the powers of attorney and declarations section, and select the service to issue an individual power of attorney.
• Step 3 - Start a new application. Choose to create a new POA.
• Step 4 - Enter the agent. Add the agent's ID number and details exactly as registered. The system validates them against national records.
• Step 5 - Choose the authority and scope. Select the authority type(s) that match your written list of what the agent may do. This is the decisive step; pick too broad and the receiving party may balk, pick too narrow and the agent cannot finish the task.
• Step 6 - Set the validity period. Pick a duration. Many residents deliberately keep it short for control.
• Step 7 - Review and approve. Confirm the summary, then approve, completing the Nafath confirmation. The POA is issued immediately and stored in the Najiz system.
• Step 8 - Save the record. Note the POA number and date, and download the document. The agent can then act using that record, which the receiving party verifies electronically.

That is the entire flow with no notary visit and no court queue. The friction is almost never the clicks; it is the Arabic phrasing and the scope choices in Steps 4 and 5. The table below restates the flow with the specific watch-out at each step, because knowing where a step usually fails is more useful than knowing the step exists.

Abstract advice about scope only lands when you see it fail. Here are two situations we encounter repeatedly, both with the same root cause and the same fix.

Scenario one: the car sale that the traffic flow rejected. An expat is leaving for a long trip and wants a colleague to sell his car while he is away. He logs into Najiz, finds a general authority that translates to something like managing affairs and vehicles, sets it for five years, and flies out. When the colleague tries to complete the ownership transfer, the traffic and Absher vehicle flow checks the scope and does not accept the generic authority for that specific transfer. The colleague is stuck, the buyer walks, and the owner has to reissue from abroad through Nafath under time pressure. The fix would have been a narrow vehicle authority that named the car and clearly covered sale and transfer, issued for a short window. Narrower would have been faster, not slower.

Scenario two: the banking POA bounced at the counter. A resident issues a POA so his wife can handle a transaction on his account while he is hospitalised. The authority he picks reads, in translation, as managing personal affairs. It is genuine, electronically authenticated, and verifiable by QR code. The bank still declines, because its compliance desk wants the financial authority spelled out and, ideally, the institution and the specific actions named. The document is valid but insufficient. The redraft that worked named the bank, identified the account purpose, and selected the specific financial authority category rather than a general one. Same portal, same five minutes of clicking, completely different outcome.

The lesson in both is identical: validity is not the bar, sufficiency of scope is. The receiving party, not the MOJ, decides whether your wording is enough, and the receiving party is usually stricter than the portal that issued the document.

In Saudi Arabia a power of attorney is generally valid for up to five years unless you set a shorter period or revoke it earlier. You are free to choose a shorter window when you issue it, and for sensitive authorities (such as banking) a short window is often wise.

One important exception: real estate powers of attorney inside Saudi Arabia are commonly capped at a shorter period (often around one year from issuance). Because these caps can change, confirm the current limit on Najiz at the time you issue. The table below summarises the validity picture, with deliberate hedging because the figures are the kind that get adjusted.

You can revoke a POA at any time through Najiz, and the revocation takes effect once recorded. You can also view all the powers of attorney you have issued (and any issued to you) inside your Najiz account, which is the easiest way to keep track of who can act for you. If your circumstances change, for example you are preparing to leave the country on a final exit visa or travelling on an exit/re-entry visa, review your active POAs and revoke anything you no longer want live.

Issuing a POA is the easy half. The half people neglect is keeping track of what is live and shutting down what should not be. Because each POA is a record in the MOJ system rather than a piece of paper, your Najiz account is effectively a dashboard of every authority you have granted and every one granted to you. Open it periodically and treat it like a permissions list, because that is exactly what it is.

Revocation is immediate in effect once recorded. The moment you revoke, the agent can no longer act, and any authority that verifies the POA afterward will see it as cancelled. This is your strongest protection, but it only works if you actually do it. The common loose end is a POA issued for a one-off task that was never revoked once the task was done. A car sale completes, a court matter closes, a trip ends, and the authority simply sits there, live, for years. There is no good reason to leave a banking or vehicle authority active after its purpose is served.

A few habits keep this clean. Set the validity window to the task, not the maximum, so even a forgotten POA expires on its own. Revoke as soon as the job is finished rather than waiting for expiry. Before any major change in your situation, especially leaving the country, do a deliberate sweep of your active POAs and cancel anything you no longer want a named person able to use. And if someone presents a POA naming you as the agent for someone else, remember the principal can revoke it at any time, so verify it is still live before you rely on it. The record, not the printout, is what counts.

For standard personal use, issuing an electronic power of attorney through Najiz is generally free or very low cost, which is one of the main reasons the online route has displaced the old notary visit. Inquiry and verification services are typically free; some transactional services on the wider portal carry fees that vary by service type.

We are deliberately not quoting a fixed riyal figure here, because fee schedules on government portals change and depend on the exact service and your situation. Treat any number you see in older articles with suspicion and confirm the current fee on Najiz or with the MOJ before you assume it is free. The bigger cost is rarely the issuance itself. It is the downstream cost of getting the scope wrong, a wasted bank trip, a collapsed car sale, an agent stranded mid-transaction, and, where the POA is bound for use abroad, the attestation chain. If your wider paperwork picture involves attestation or legalisation costs (common when the POA will be used abroad), our GCC attestation cost estimator gives a more realistic budget than guessing.

Every electronic document issued through Najiz, including your POA, carries a QR code and a unique document number. Any authority, a bank teller, a traffic officer, a government clerk, can verify the document's authenticity instantly by scanning the QR code or looking it up by number and date in Najiz, without contacting a court.

This is also your protection as a principal. If someone presents a POA to you claiming to act for another person, you should verify it through Najiz before you rely on it. A POA that cannot be verified electronically should be treated as suspect. The QR mechanism is precisely why the electronic version is now trusted more than a paper page that could, in theory, be altered. It is also why a revocation bites instantly: the verification step reads the live record, so a printout in the agent's hand means nothing once the record shows the authority as cancelled.

Here is the part that catches expats out. A POA can be perfectly valid, correctly issued, electronically authenticated, and still be rejected at the counter, most often at a bank. Why? Because validity and sufficiency of scope are two different things.

Banks in Saudi Arabia apply some of the strictest scrutiny to powers of attorney, for obvious anti-fraud reasons. The table below sets out the common failure modes, why each one happens, and how to avoid it at the drafting stage rather than discovering it at the counter.

The fix is almost always at the drafting stage, not the counter. Getting the authority type and the wording right the first time, in correct Arabic legal phrasing, is the difference between a five-minute transaction and a wasted trip. This is exactly where most do-it-yourself attempts come unstuck, and exactly the gap our drafting work removes.

A common expat need is authorising a relative back home to manage property or money in the home country. A Najiz POA is a Saudi legal instrument; for a foreign authority to accept it, it usually needs to be translated and legalised/attested through the appropriate chain (often the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the destination country's embassy), and the receiving country may have its own format requirements.

This is a separate process from issuing the POA itself, and it is where timelines and costs grow. The table below lays out the typical attestation stages so you can plan the time, not just the document. Treat it as the general shape of the chain and confirm the exact steps for your destination country, because acceptance rules differ widely.

If your POA is bound for use overseas, plan the attestation route early; our GCC certificate attestation guide explains the chain, and our attestation service can handle the legalisation end to end so the document is actually accepted on the other side. Always confirm the destination country's specific requirements before you start, because acceptance rules differ widely, and make sure the POA's validity window comfortably outlasts the attestation timeline.

The Najiz portal is free and the clicking is easy. The expensive part is getting the scope and the Arabic wording wrong and discovering it only when a bank or a government department turns the agent away. That is what we remove.

When you ask Wathim to handle your Wakala, we do the parts that actually cause failures: we translate what you want into the correct Najiz authority category, we phrase the scope so the receiving party (bank, traffic department, land registry, court) will accept it, we make sure the agent's details and your eligibility are right before anything is submitted, and we set a sensible validity period. If the POA is going abroad, we line up the attestation so it is usable on arrival.

In short: you tell us, in plain language, who should be able to do what, and we make sure the document that comes out of Najiz is the one the counter will actually accept. We also help with the surrounding paperwork that often travels with a POA request, from iqama transfers to premium residency matters and broader residency and visa support. If you cannot navigate the Arabic flow, do not gamble with a document a bank can reject. Let us draft and issue it correctly the first time.