News
Carrefour City+ In Mall Of The Emirates Becomes Dubai’s First Contactless Store
Besides the shopping experience, the contactless checkout system also improves the store’s inventory management.
The impact of digital technology on the way we shop has been profound — just consider the fact that we can now order about anything we want online with a few simple clicks and have it shipped from the other side of the world in a few days (if you’re willing to pay for express shipping, of course). Now, shoppers at Carrefour City+ in Mall of the Emirates can simply grab anything they want and leave without going through the traditional checkout process, which, as you probably are personally familiar, can be a painfully slow experience.
“Carrefour City+ has been designed to make life easier by using technology to remove friction and enhance the retail experience,” revealed Hani Weiss, Chief Executive Officer at Majid Al Futtaim Retail. “The store represents a huge leap forwards for retail in the UAE and region as Carrefour continues to innovate to meet the needs of the present whilst anticipating future shopping trends”.
The retail and leisure operator Majid Al Futtaim (MAF) has enabled the first contactless checkout experience in Dubai using artificial intelligence and the current MAF Carrefour App. Here’s how it works in practice:
- A customer enters the store using the MAF Carrefour App.
- The customer can then simply pick any items from the shelves.
- Artificial intelligence identifies each picked item.
- All items are automatically added to a digital shopping basket.
- When the customer walks out of the store, payment is automatically made for the content of the digital shopping basket.
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Carrefour City+ stocks over 1,300 items, including basic food items, ready-to-go meals, and personal hygiene products. Besides the shopping experience, the contactless checkout system also improves the store’s inventory management, ensuring pinpoint accuracy at all times. Does this sound like a shopping experience you’d be interested in?
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.
Visa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon
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