News

Metaverse Will Bring $15B Annually To Gulf Economies By 2030

The travel and tourism industries alone will gain $3.2 billion once the virtual universe reaches its full potential.

Published

4 years ago

December 8, 2022

metaverse will bring $15 billion to gulf economies by 2030

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are already heavily invested in the development of the Metaverse, and the tech startups are playing a pivotal role in its construction. According to a recent report compiled by Strategy& Middle East, that investment will likely pay off to the tune of a cool $15 billion in annual revenue by 2030.

“The projections assessed growth in the component technologies, platforms, hardware, and software, as well as the economic contribution of new metaverse applications such as content creation, shopping, and so on,” says Tony G. Karam, partner at Strategy& Middle East.

Out of the seven Emirates, Dubai is emerging as the pre-eminent metaverse economy. Experts predict that the region’s digital strategy will bring a $4 billion boost to GDP, with 40,000 new jobs created in the process. The UAE as a whole has embraced Web3.0 enthusiastically and recently established the first metaverse incubator.

Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia, NEOM — a $500 billion futuristic metropolis on the Red Sea — will also build a parallel digital version of its cityscape, enabling people to coexist in both the real world and the Metaverse simultaneously.

Also Read: The UAE Has Launched A Program To Assist 100 Startups

“The Metaverse holds a world of possibilities that extends beyond next-generation gaming and internet-based home buying or shopping. It will change how we work, transact, plan, design, build, shop, recreate, travel, and live. In a regional context, the Metaverse’s potential to energize and transform key sectors in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries is enormous,” says Dany Karam, partner at Strategy& Middle East.

Breaking down Strategy&’s predicted annual raise in GDP reveals the following figures:

Saudi Arabia: $7.6 billion
UAE: $3.3 billion
Qatar: $1.6 billion
Kuwait: $ 1 billion
Oman: $0.8 billion
Bahrain: $0.4 billion

Although the Metaverse is still relatively unknown to the general public, experts believe that in the near future, a thriving digital tourism sector will emerge, with tours to famous UNESCO World Heritage Sites, concerts, festivals and sports events all having their own digital versions.

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.