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Saudi Arabia Plans Digital Twins For 5 Cities, Including Mecca
The project involves the creation of a cloud-based platform that will become central to the Kingdom’s smart city project.
South Korean tech company Naver has signed a contract with the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Municipal, Rural Affairs and Housing (MOMRAH) to build and administer digital twins for five of the country’s biggest cities: Riyadh, Medina, Jeddah, Dammam, and Mecca.
The news comes after a visit from South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who arrived in the Kingdom to discuss deepening economic ties, explaining that “If South Korea, which has cutting-edge technologies and a successful experience of industrial development, joins hands with Saudi Arabia, with its abundant capital and growth potential, we can create synergy stronger than any other nation”.
Naver has already signed a memorandum with MOMRAH to support Saudi Arabia’s digital transformation. Discussions have also taken place with Majed Al Hogail, Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Housing, on digitizing other aspects of city planning, transportation, and public safety.
The digital twin program reflects ongoing efforts to boost decision-making and improve digitization using AI, robotics, and cloud-based solutions. The project will be pivotal in the development of smart city infrastructure and will be used for a wide variety of tasks, including urban planning and flood monitoring.
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“Leveraging Naver’s globally competitive technologies, we aim to spearhead the second wave of export boom to the Middle East. With this project as a starting point, Naver will also act as a bridge for Korean IT startups entering the Middle Eastern market,” announced Chae Seon-ju, President of ESG and External Policy at Naver.
Korean company Naver emphasized that digital twins platform could become the foundation for numerous technologies and services in what could become a continually evolving project. South Korean and Saudi startups could also use the open platform cloud software for urban water management, real estate services, robotics, autonomous driving applications, and traffic planning.
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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