News

Amazon Prime Day 2024: Get Ready For 6 Days Of Amazing Deals

The hotly-anticipated annual event has been extended to nearly a full week, with hot offers arriving from July 16 to July 21 exclusively for Prime members.

Published

2 years ago

June 28, 2024

Nour Nasir

Amazon

Amazon’s highly anticipated Prime Day event is returning this summer on Amazon.ae, exclusively for Prime members. This year, for the first time in the UAE, Prime Day will span six full days, kicking off at 00:01am (local UAE time) on July 16 and running until July 21. During this period, Prime members in the UAE can look forward to substantial discounts across over 30 product categories, including electronics, gaming, fashion, beauty, Amazon Fresh grocery, kitchen, home, health, sports, and Amazon Devices.

Prime members shopping on Amazon.ae will have access to an extensive selection of deals from leading local and international brands such as Nivea, Samsung, Skechers, Guess, Joseph & Joseph, Cetaphil, Nespresso, Black+Decker, Microsoft, Lenovo, Lego, OnePlus, Anker, Roborock, and many more, including local small and medium-sized businesses.

Also Read: Top E-Commerce Websites In The Middle East In 2024

Additionally, Prime members will benefit from Prime Day deals available on Amazon US, UK, and Germany through the Amazon.ae Global Store, featuring free international shipping with no minimum purchase required.

Stefano Martinelli, Vice President of Amazon UAE and Saudi Arabia, said: “This is the first year in the UAE that we extend Prime Day for six full days, catering to customer demand, and we look forward to celebrating this with members across the country as we show up for them with incredible deals. Prime Day will always be the most compelling time to join Prime to enjoy savings, convenience, and entertainment all rolled into one single membership, it’s about getting the most value out of Amazon”.

Preparing For Prime Day

Not a Prime member yet? There’s still plenty of time to join Prime and start saving while enjoying fast free delivery! Members can join Prime at Amazon.ae/prime for AED 16 per month or an annual fee of AED 140.

As well as benefiting from the epic deals on offer, a Prime membership also gives members access to year-round features including Prime Video, Amazon Fresh grocery and everyday essentials, and Prime Gaming.

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.