News

Instagram Tops 3B Users And Pushes New Reels & UI Tweaks

After hitting the significant milestone, the Meta-owned platform is adding new Reels controls and a navigation bar redesign.

Published

12 months ago

September 25, 2025

Nour Nasir

Instagram

Instagram has crossed 3 billion monthly users, making it Meta’s third app to reach the milestone after Facebook and WhatsApp. CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri confirmed the figure this week, underlining Meta’s dominance in social platforms.

It’s hard to overstate the significance of that massive user count. Three billion monthly logins is more than a third of the global population. With Meta’s apps blocked in China and many regions still offline, the figure suggests over half of the connected world uses Instagram.

Reels In Focus

To mark the occasion, Instagram is testing a feature that shows which topics the Reels algorithm believes you’re interested in. Users can add, remove, or mute categories to shape their feed. Most may leave the system untouched, but it offers a manual lever for those who want it.

Instagram is also shifting its navigation. Direct Messages moves down to the bottom bar alongside Home and Reels, while the create button shifts to the top left and search nudges right. The redesign reflects where users spend most of their time.

Also Read: How To Find & Cancel Pending Instagram Requests

Next Moves

Reels is already the app’s most used feature. Instagram has tested defaulting to Reels in some regions and on iPad, though for now the main feed still opens first. A full switch feels only a matter of time.

At 3 billion users, the platform is more than Meta’s third giant app — it’s another example of the company scaling compulsive behavior to a global audience.

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

2 weeks 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.