News

A Floating Drone Is Helping To Clean Up Dubai Harbor’s Waters

The PixieDrone cleanup robot is on a mission to collect difficult-to-detect debris.

Published

3 years ago

September 22, 2023

a floating drone is helping to clean up dubai harbor's waters

Dubai Harbor has employed an efficient new AI-powered worker to clean up its waters. The small, floating drone is called a PixieDrone — a waste collection machine fitted with a video camera and remote sensing LIDAR tech.

PixieDrone can operate autonomously for around six hours, collecting and sorting up to 160 liters of organic waste, plastic, glass, paper, metal, cloth, and rubber.

LIDAR (light detection and ranging) sees images in 3D, allowing PixieDrone to quickly understand its surroundings, much like the latest autonomous cars.

Created by French company Searial Cleaners, PixieDrone can travel at 3 kph for up to 12 km on a single charge. The company’s website does note that the robot can operate at a maximum ambient temperature of 50°C, which could eventually become an issue in the UAE’s sweltering summer heat.

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Measuring 1.62 by 1.15 meters, the robot cleaner is able to fit into tight spaces. Searial Cleaners says the device is specifically built for harbors and coastal aquatic areas.

PixieDrone is not the first waste collection floating drone to work in UAE waters. In 2018, Dubai Marina used WasteShark, made by the Dutch company RanMarine, to collect waste and test air and water quality.

News

NEOPAY Wants To Follow Merchants Across Channels And Borders

A controlling 65% stake in noon payments would give NEOPAY access to marketplace sellers, online merchants and the payment flows they generate.

Published

1 day ago

October 5, 2026

Nour Nasir

neopay wants to follow merchants across channels and borders

It’s been a long time since checkouts were single defined places. A merchant might take payments at a physical register, on its own website and through an online marketplace, sometimes in more than one country. NEOPAY wants to follow those transactions wherever they happen.

The UAE payments company has entered into an agreement to acquire a 65% controlling stake in noon payments. NEOPAY already runs the acquiring infrastructure that lets merchants accept card payments, along with omnichannel acceptance and a merchant services platform. This new deal would add noon payments’ embedded payments platform, e-commerce gateway and merchant network across the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. That would considerably expand both NEOPAY’s digital commerce capabilities and its regional reach.

For merchants, the attraction is a single provider for online and in-store payments, plus faster settlements, data and analytics, and value-added financial services.

“Payments should be simple, reliable, and built for the markets they serve,” said Faraz Khalid, CEO of noon. His counterpart at NEOPAY, Vibhor Mundhada, added: “We have built a strong payments business in the UAE, and our ambition is now to take that capability across the region”. The acquisition, Mundhada added, would “expand our footprint into Saudi Arabia and Egypt” while reinforcing NEOPAY’s position at home.

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NEOPAY is also keen to point out potential payment volume increases. The company says noon payments’ integrations with marketplace sellers and online merchants create high transaction density in some of the region’s fastest-growing digital commerce segments. It also believes control of the business would give it access to those merchant relationships and payment flows, and speed up the rollout of alternative payment methods and installment options.

The combined roadmap targets faster merchant onboarding, better payment performance, tighter fraud controls and embedded financial services. The deal could also strengthen cross-border payments and settlement along key regional commerce corridors.