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Expo City Dubai And Yango Group Launch Autonomous Food Delivery
AI-powered delivery robots are now serving Expo City Dubai, advancing the city’s smart mobility vision with zero-emission, last-mile logistics.
Yango Group has kicked off a four-month pilot program for autonomous food delivery at Expo City Dubai, introducing AI-powered robots that offer a glimpse into the future of last-mile logistics. The initiative aims to enhance convenience for employees, residents, and visitors, while supporting Dubai’s broader smart city ambitions.
The electric, zero-emission robots will deliver meals from select restaurants to Expo City’s main office at Al Wasl Plaza. Operated through the Expo City Eats app, the service currently supports deliveries to the Al Wasl 3 building from four dining outlets.
Using high-definition maps and a suite of sensors, the robots navigate urban areas in real time, avoiding pedestrians, vehicles, and obstacles — even in low light or adverse weather. The bots independently plan their routes and adjust to dynamic conditions, quietly weaving through city environments with precision.
“We are thrilled to collaborate with Expo City Dubai on this pilot program,” said Nikita Gavrilov, Regional Head of Yango Tech Autonomy. “[The] clearly defined zones provide a perfectly controlled environment to safely and efficiently test autonomous technologies”.
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The trial is being conducted through Expo City’s Urban Lab, a city-wide innovation platform designed to test and scale technologies for sustainable, human-centric cities. “Urban Lab lowers barriers to innovation, rigorously testing solutions and preparing markets to adopt impactful, sustainable technologies,” said Dr. Amy Hochadel, Vice President – Urban Lab, Expo City Dubai.
If successful, the pilot will expand to include more restaurants and offer autonomous deliveries to all Expo City residents and businesses. The project also broadens the reach of Yango Tech — Yango Group’s B2B division — by adding to its portfolio of AI-powered enterprise solutions.
As autonomous food delivery becomes more viable, Expo City Dubai is positioning itself as a living testbed for innovation — where sustainability, mobility, and technology converge.
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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