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KSA To Roll Out Google Pay And Alipay+ As Digital Payments Surge

Google Pay will arrive this year and Alipay+ by 2026 through mada, part of SAMA’s push to expand cashless payments under Vision 2030.

Published

12 months ago

September 16, 2025

Nour Nasir

ksa to roll out google pay and alipay+ as digital payments surge

Google Pay will soon launch in Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom’s central bank confirmed during the Money20/20 Middle East conference in Riyadh. The move marks an expansion of the country’s digital payments ecosystem and supports its Vision 2030 target of lifting cashless transactions to 70% by 2025.

The Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) has also signed an agreement with Ant International to deploy Alipay+ services by 2026. Both Google Pay and Alipay+ will be routed through mada, the national payments network, ensuring compatibility with domestic cards and retail systems.

SAMA described Google Pay as offering “an advanced and secure payments experience,” allowing users to provision and manage mada cards and credit cards directly in the Google Wallet app. Officials said the launch is part of wider efforts to strengthen infrastructure and support the Kingdom’s fintech ambitions.

The Alipay+ agreement will allow visitors to make purchases in Saudi Arabia using international wallets linked to the platform, streamlining cross-border transactions and reinforcing the Kingdom’s role as a payments hub.

Also Read: Uber To Add Blade Air Taxi Bookings Through Its App

Speaking in Riyadh, SAMA Governor Ayman Al-Sayari struck an optimistic note: the number of Saudi fintech firms jumped from 82 at the end of 2022 to around 281 by August 2025. He put cumulative sector investment at $2.39 billion and described the payments system as a standout success, with electronic payments making up 79% of retail transactions in 2024 — amounting to 12.6 billion transactions, up from 10.8 billion the year before.

Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan added that the Saudi financial market has reached nearly $640 billion, making it one of the fastest-growing globally. He said work is underway to integrate artificial intelligence into financial systems, part of broader reforms tied to Vision 2030.

Related Topics:Alipay FinTech Google Pay Saudi Arabia

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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 days 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.