News

Egypt Secures $345 Million For Electric Railway Project

The ambitious new project will link Ain Sokhna on the Red Sea to Marsa Matrouh and Alexandria on the Mediterranean.

Published

3 years ago

April 3, 2023

Nour Nasir

egypt secures $345 million for electric railway project

Siemens

Over the past few years, Egypt has been investing in multiple road, river, and rail projects in a bid to reduce its environmental impact. The Islamic Development Bank recently approved $344.5 million of funding to finance Phase I of the Electric Express Train Project. The massive civil engineering construction will benefit 25 million people annually and decrease CO2 emissions by approximately 250,000 tons per year.

According to a press release, Ain Sokhna on the Red Sea, Marsa Matrouh and Alexandria on the Mediterranean will be linked by a 660 km track.

Also Read: A Guide To Digital Payment Methods In The Middle East

“The transformative projects approved in this board meeting will have a significant impact on improving transportation, education, and energy, as well as promoting regional economic integration and addressing emergencies,” says Muhammad Al-Jasser, president and board chairman of IsDB.

The electric train will connect all of Egypt’s governorates and comprise three lines, each with 60 stations and a total of 2,000 km of track. The first line will stop at 22 locations from Ain Sukhna to Hadayek October, Alexandria, El Alamein, and Marsa Matrouh.

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.