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Google Pay To Arrive In Saudi Arabia In 2025
The debut aligns with the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 and supports the country’s push towards a cashless economy and rapid digital growth.
Google Pay will officially debut in Saudi Arabia in 2025, thanks to a new agreement between the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) and Google. The digital wallet will seamlessly integrate with mada, the Kingdom’s national payment network.
This move ties into SAMA’s broader push to enhance Saudi Arabia’s digital payments landscape, a cornerstone of Vision 2030 — an ambitious initiative aimed at reducing the economy’s reliance on oil. By introducing secure, world-class digital payment systems, the central bank aims to lower cash usage and build a more robust digital payments infrastructure.
Once launched, Google Pay will offer Saudi users a streamlined way to shop in-store, online, and through apps, while also letting them manage their cards via Google Wallet. The growing popularity of card payments in the Kingdom reflects the government’s ongoing efforts to encourage a cashless society through advanced electronic payment solutions.
Saudi Arabia has set an ambitious target of reaching 70% non-cash transactions by 2030, with programs like SARIE playing a vital role in this transformation. Such initiatives, backed by government support and private partnerships, are helping drive the Kingdom toward greater adoption of digital payments.
Also Read: A Guide To Digital Payment Methods In The Middle East
The country’s digital payments market is projected to grow by 6.96% annually from 2025 to 2028, reaching $87.14 billion by 2028, according to Statista.
Progress is already evident: SAMA reports that by 2023, 70% of all retail consumer payments were made electronically, a jump from 62% in 2022. This milestone also serves as a key performance indicator (KPI) for the Financial Sector Development Program (FSDP), which aims to modernize the Kingdom’s financial system.
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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