News

IDC CIO Summit 2022 Is Coming To Qatar

In addition to the insightful panels, attendees will also have the chance to win exclusive prizes, take home personalized caricatures, and watch entertainment events.

Published

4 years ago

September 9, 2022

David Morelo

As the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology sector, International Data Corporation (IDC) is perfectly positioned to explore the increasing pace of innovation in Qatar and examine the country’s evolving technology landscape.

On September 27, 2022, IDC will host its IDC Qatar CIO Summit 2022 to bring together regional and global technology experts, who will discuss the hottest ICT issues inside the Al Silia grand ballroom of Grand Hyatt Doha Hotel & Villas, a 5-star luxury resort located just 6 minutes away from the Lagoona Mall and 4 km from The Pearl-Qatar island.

Here are some of the topics, discussions, panel sessions, and keynote presentations that will be on the agenda during the IDC Qatar CIO Summit 2022:

IDC Keynote: Innovating in a Digital-First World (Ranjit Rajan, Vice President of Research at IDC)
Single, Hybrid, or Multicloud? How to Craft Your Cloud Transformation with Confidence (Sriram Narasimhan, Associate Vice President of Solutions at Cloud4C)
Powering the Digital Economy with Data-First Modernization (Mohammad Al-Jallad, Chief Technology Officer & Director at Hewlett Packard Enterprise)
Panel Discussion: Talent Development & The Demand For New Skills: How Do You Structure Your Team Optimally (Alexandra Tarazi, Executive Director of Health Information and Communication Technology at Public Health Care Corporation)
How to Recover from a Ransomware Attack: Cyber Recovery Services (Hakan Dincel, Regional Manager at GlassHouse)
Combining NetOps with SecOps to Break Down Cyber Security Silos (Sammy Elyan, Business Development Manager at Fortinet)

End users can attend the event free of charge, and registrations are already open. Besides the opportunity to hear what some of the brightest and most talented people in the ICT sector have to say, attendees will also have the chance to win exclusive prizes, take home personalized caricatures, and watch entertainment events.

The IDC Qatar CIO Summit 2022 will take place ahead of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, which is scheduled to happen in Qatar from November 20th to December 18th, 2022. The 2022 FIFA World Cup is expected to attract many international visitors who have no previous experience with the plethora of new digital products and services introduced in recent years by Qatari organizations.

According to 2022 IDC research, CIOs in Qatar have rapidly digitalized operations and enabled new digital business models and ecosystem partnerships for the tournament and beyond, with 70 percent of them successfully increasing cost efficiencies as a result.

The technology implementations carried out by CIOs in Qatar include process automation, cloud migration, and the development of agile infrastructure, just to give three examples. Together, they help drive the country’s digital economy and expand its ICT ecosystem by creating a sustained demand for competitive IT services and solutions.

IDC was founded in 1964 by American businessman Patrick Joseph McGovern. Since then, its worldwide network of analysts, who offer global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries, has exceeded 1,300. You can learn more about IDC and the IDC Qatar CIO Summit on its official website.

News

Visa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon

Foreign visitors will be the first users to benefit, but whether Syria’s own banks and cardholders follow is still an open question.

Published

2 weeks ago

August 27, 2026

Dana Saadeh

visa's return to syria starts with a test and a bank in lebanon

Visa is returning to Syria. Its first live international card transaction in the country was a test rather than a launch, and the milestone event ran through a Lebanese bank.

The acquirer (the bank on the merchant’s side of a card payment) was Fransabank Lebanon, with Paymera as the other named partner. Nadim Moujaes, who heads a Fransabank Group subsidiary, describes the test as both the culmination of “longstanding efforts to link Syria back to international payment networks” and “the first step in a larger path”.

Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa makes the first electronic payment in Syria using a @Visa card at a store in Damascus, following the lifting of US sanctions on Syria. pic.twitter.com/lpAN7nQ6Fc

— Tech Magazine (@TechMGZN) August 27, 2026

“We are excited to have successfully tested live transactions today as we plan to enable international visitors to use their Visa cards while in Syria,” says Leila Serhan, Visa’s senior vice president and group country manager for the North Africa, Levant and Pakistan region. Although a significant first step, that plan doesn’t come with a hard date for when a visitor’s card will work normally.

Mohammed Safwat Raslan, governor of the Central Bank of Syria, says the test paves the way for international card acceptance in Syria and that maintaining strong compliance, risk management and operational controls will remain essential. Serhan likewise stresses that Visa has worked within applicable legal, regulatory and compliance requirements. For a test transaction, it seems there was a great deal of attention paid to the rules, with the entire operation being carefully managed.

Also Read: Lebanon’s 5G Era Begins With 150 Stations And A $1M Budget

The test is the latest step in a sequence that began in December 2025, when Visa announced a strategic roadmap to support Syria’s integration into the global digital economy. In February 2026 it hosted its first industry gathering of banks, ecosystem partners and policymakers in Damascus and, the same month, signed an agreement with Syria’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in San Francisco.

Michel Kattouah, Paymera’s CEO, called the test “the return of international card acceptance,” but while that’s positive news, there’s no word yet on when a Syrian bank will issue a Visa card to a Syrian customer.