News

Montblanc Combines Luxury With A Twist In Latest Wearable

Montblanc’s new Summit 3 Smartwatch is an exercise in classic watchmaking, but comes loaded with the latest wearable technology.

Published

4 years ago

September 6, 2022

Nour Nasir

Montblanc

As a purveyor of fine timepieces, luxury pens and luggage, Montblanc is no stranger to high-end design. The German brand created its first smartwatch back in 2017 and has just released its latest timepiece, the Summit 3, a high-end wearable aimed at a well-heeled “business lifestyle” audience.

Featuring a hand-crafted titanium case with optional calf leather straps, the watch sits at the high end of the wearable genre and manages to make an Apple Watch look positively ordinary by comparison. Here’s what Montblanc’s CEO had to say about the latest release:

“The Montblanc Summit 3 smartwatch takes luxury smart watchmaking to new heights, pairing premium materials with all the functionalities our clients need as they navigate their day more seamlessly and effectively. The personalization options are also extensive to reflect different style identities,” says Nicolas Baretzki, CEO of Montblanc.

montblanc summit 3 smartwatch

The smartwatch runs Google’s Wear OS and includes three different versions under the same Summit 3 line:

Titanium Gray with black calf and blue rubber straps.
Titanium Black with black calf and black rubber straps.
Titanium Bicolor with Montblanc Extreme 3.0 British green calf strap and black rubber straps.

Personalization options are enormous and include variations in the watch face, such as the 1858, Geosphere or Bohème — though all Summit 3 variants feature a raft of modern tech, generating daily progress, health insights and workout goals for the wearer.

Also Read: Fitbit Unveils 3 New Fitness Trackers — Without Wear OS 3

As well as looking and feeling beautiful, the Montblanc Summit 3 features a personal health suite that includes step tracking, sleep monitoring, and blood oxygen measurement. Of course, with OS Wear, it’s also possible to add apps such as Google Maps and Google Pay, whilst Montblanc’s improvements mean that the battery life of the Summit 3 easily beats the outgoing model.

So what will all of this high-tech titanium-wrapped goodness set you back? Expect to pay $1,290 for the base models before adding any extras.

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.