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ChatGPT Offers API Access & Developers Are Taking Advantage
Businesses can now develop paid services using the popular AI language model, meaning chatbots will soon be appearing everywhere.
On March 1, OpenAI, the San Francisco artificial intelligence company, released API access to their insanely popular ChatGPT tool, along with Whisper, a speech recognition service.
Since the release of ChatGPT, developers have been using the platform to build all manner of custom tools, including apps like QuickVid AI, which automatically generates ideas for YouTube videos. The app’s creator, Daniel Habib, explained that until now, it was impossible to monetize software featuring chatbot AI.
“All of these unofficial tools that were just toys, essentially, that would live in your own personal sandbox can now actually go out to tons of users,” Habib says.
OpenAI’s API release could mark the start of a new AI gold rush. What was previously a series of industrious hobbyists creating apps in a licensing gray area could soon become an entirely new industry.
“What this release means for companies is that adding AI capabilities to applications is much more accessible and affordable,” notes Hassan El Mghari, who manages TwitterBio, a ChatGPT service that generates Twitter profile text for users.
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OpenAI has also updated its data retention policy and will now only hold user data for 30 days, promising it won’t use user-generated text inputs to train its AI models. This policy change means that companies will be in better control of their data rather than needing to trust a third party to manage where it goes.
In addition to better data-retention policies, API access to ChatGPT is now 10 times cheaper than OpenAI’s lower-powered GPT3 API, which launched in June 2020. The falling price of many of these large language models means there will likely be a plethora of AI chatbots to choose from in the near future.
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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.
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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