News

Apple Wallet Will Be Able To Store COVID-19 Vaccination Cards

The feature will be available in the next iOS update.

Published

5 years ago

September 23, 2021

David Morelo

Apple

Since the recent public release of iOS 15, iPhone users have been able to store COVID-19 immunizations and test results in the Health app and share them with approved third-party apps. We now know that the upcoming iOS 15.1 update, whose beta version has just been released to developers, will add the ability to store COVID-19 vaccination cards in the Apple Wallet app to present to businesses, venues, and more.

The vaccination information will be stored using the SMART Health Card standard, whose goal is to make presenting this kind of information in a verifiable manner to another party as easy as possible.

Apple

“Organizations that issue SMART Health Cards will soon be able to use a new button to let users know that they can securely download and store their vaccination information in the Health app and quickly add and present it from Wallet,” states Apple on its developer website.

Because the standard is open, there’s nothing stopping any health organization from implementing it to produce a digital proof of vaccination whose verification is as easy as scanning a QR code.

Also Read: Samsung Pay Introduces Support For Digital COVID-19 Vaccination Cards

We don’t know when the iOS 15.1 update will be released, but our guess is that it won’t take too long considering that minor updates are usually spaced approximately one month apart.

The SMART Health Card standard is just one of many examples of how the disruption and challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic have promoted innovation. We can now only hope that it won’t take too long before presenting vaccination information in any form will, once again, be reserved only for very rare occasions.

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.