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Coinfest Asia Returns For 2023 With A Web2.5 Theme
The immersive festival will be held in Bali on 24-25 August 2023 to the delight of crypto enthusiasts, developers, and creators.
Coinfest Asia, the immersive Web3 festival, will return on 24-25 August 2023 in Bali. The previous event hosted over 2,000 participants from 50+ countries, with attendees coming from institutional, retail, and regulatory backgrounds.
For this year’s event, Coinfest Asia will be held under a new theme known as Converge. As the name suggests, Converge will bring together Web2 and Web3 industries into the transitional Web2.5 implementation.
The internet has existed for over 50 years, with most experts agreeing that its development happened in two distinct cycles. Web1 was the basic internet that most users are familiar with, and existed primarily to share information. Web2, on the other hand, allowed users to create more interactive web pages. The next internet iteration, Web3, takes things to another level with blockchain, crypto, decentralized technologies, NFTs, AI, and the Metaverse.
To many people, however, Web3 is still quite an abstract concept. Coinfest Asia hopes to bridge the gap by focusing on the halfway house of Web 2.5.
“This year, Coinfest Asia will be back with insights and various interactive and interesting activities about the Web 2.5 industry, which is a period of industry transition from Web2 to Web3. This event is also our platform to contribute so that the industry on Web3 continues to grow, especially in Asia,” says Felita Setiawan, Director of ICN and organizer of Coinfest Asia.
Also Read: The Largest Data Breaches In The Middle East
Coinfest Asia will showcase Web2.5 case studies and real-life solutions, while companies can show off their products and network with one another. Outside corporate-based activities, the event will also see crypto enthusiasts, developers, creators, and fund managers coming together to explore the latest technologies.
Through Coinfest Asia, attendees will be invited to experience the shift from Web2 to Web3 themselves, and with tickets available today at special prices, there’s never been a better time to experience what the future holds for your favorite technologies!
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.
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.
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