A numerical analysis has been carried out to investigate the problem of MHD boundary‐layer flow and heat transfer of a viscous incompressible fluid over a moving vertical permeable stretching sheet with velocity and temperature slip boundary condition. A problem formulation is developed in the presence of radiation, viscous dissipation, and buoyancy force. A similarity transformation is used to reduce the governing boundary‐layer equations to coupled higher‐order nonlinear ordinary differential equations. These equations are solved numerically using the fourth‐order Runge–Kutta method along with shooting technique. The effects of the governing parameters such as Prandtl number, buoyancy parameter, slip parameter, magnetic parameter, Eckert Number, suction, and radiation parameter on the velocity and temperature profiles are discussed and shown by plotting graphs. It is found that the temperature is a decreasing function of the slip parameter ST. The results also indicate that the cooling rate of the sheet can be improved by increasing the buoyancy parameter. In addition the numerical results for the local skin friction coefficient and local Nusselt number are computed and presented in tabular form. The numerical results are compared and found to be in good agreement with previously published results on special cases of the problem. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Heat Trans Asian Res, 43(5): 412–426, 2014; Published online 3 October 2013 in Wiley Online Library (http://wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/htj). DOI 10.1002/htj.21086