News

Crypto Trading Launches On The Sarwa App

Sarwa comes with a number of useful features to help its users trade more comfortably, including daily and weekly investing news, watchlists, as well as limit and stop orders.

Published

4 years ago

May 31, 2022

David Morelo

Sarwa

With the global economic outlook not showing any signs of recovery, there are increasingly many people who are looking to diversify their investment portfolios to protect their money from the painful bite of inflation.

Despite the risks associated with them, cryptocurrencies can provide a better return on investment than the stock market, but getting started with them can be a challenge.

Now, Sarwa, a personal finance and investment platform, is making crypto trading more accessible with the launch of Sarwa Crypto, a commission-free trading platform with support for Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash.

By launching Sarwa Crypto, Sarwa Digital Wealth (Capital) Limited, the company behind the platform, gives its users even more options to invest their money.

“Having access to investing in a simple, regulated, and low-cost environment should be a priority and available for all in the region,” said Mark Chahwan, co-founder and CEO of Sarwa. “There is a significant amount of interest around cryptocurrency in the GCC, even with the recent market development. Yet you didn’t have a platform that offered a centralized view of stocks, ETFs, and crypto in one safe, innovative and easy-to-use app. You do now.”

Also Read: Decentraland Just Hosted The UAE’s First Metaverse Wedding

In addition to making it easy to buy and sell cryptocurrencies, Sarwa comes with a number of useful features to help its users trade more comfortably, including daily and weekly investing news, watchlists, as well as limit and stop orders.

The platform has been designed from the ground up with security in mind, and it protects user data with 256-bit encryption. What’s also reassuring is that Sarwa is regulated by both the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) and the Financial Regulatory Services Authority (FSRA).

For its services, Sarwa charges its users a flat fee of 0.85%, 0.7%, or 0.5% per year, depending on how much they trade, and there are no hidden surprise fees or lock-in periods to worry about.

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

6 days 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.