News
Paymob Gets Official Certification To Operate In Saudi Arabia
The fastest growing fintech in the MENA region has been issued with Saudi Arabian Payment Technical Services Provider certification.
Paymob, the MENA region’s leading fintech payment provider, has announced that it can now officially provide services in Saudi Arabia, after securing Payment Technical Services Provider (PTSP) certification.
The fintech startup opened an office in Riyad in April 2023, and being given the official go-ahead by the Saudi government represents a considerable milestone for Paymob and its regional expansion plans.
Since its foundation in 2015, Paymob has enabled over 200,000 small-to-medium businesses and e-commerce merchants across North Africa and the Middle East to accept payment via 40+ online and in-store methods.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is home to over 1 million microbusinesses and small-to-medium enterprises and boasts a favorable growth rate of 12% per annum. As part of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 strategy, the government plans to increase the contribution from small businesses to the country’s GDP from 20% to 35% while simultaneously boosting the amount of non-cash transactions to over 70% of the total consumer spend.
Saudi Arabia is also experiencing extremely rapid eCommerce growth, with year-on-year transaction volumes increasing by 65%. The country’s rapid digitization and favorable market conditions make it an excellent fit for digital payments enablers like Paymob, which has a proven history of providing highly-localized, cutting-edge solutions.
Also Read: A Guide To Digital Payment Methods In The Middle East
Islam Shawky, Co-founder and CEO of Paymob, was understandably enthusiastic about the recent certification: “Obtaining the PTSP certification in Saudi Arabia is a significant accomplishment for us. It reflects Paymob’s commitment to our KSA expansion plans while serving merchants and entrepreneurs across the Kingdom to support their growth with cutting-edge financial technology solutions. We are excited to contribute to the emerging fintech ecosystem in Saudi Arabia and to play our part in driving the Kingdom’s digital transformation outlined in Vision 2030”.
News
Google Releases Veo 2 AI Video Tool To MENA Users
The state-of-the-art video generation model is now available in Gemini, offering realistic AI-generated videos with better physics, motion, and detail.
Starting today, users of Gemini Advanced in the MENA region — and globally — can tap into Veo 2, Google’s next-generation video model.
Originally unveiled in 2024, Veo 2 has now been fully integrated into Gemini, supporting multiple languages including Arabic and English. The rollout now brings Google’s most advanced video AI directly into the hands of everyday users.
Veo 2 builds on the foundations of its predecessor with a more sophisticated understanding of the physical world. It’s designed to produce high-fidelity video content with cinematic detail, realistic motion, and greater visual consistency across a wide range of subjects and styles. Whether recreating natural landscapes, human interactions, or stylized environments, the model is capable of interpreting and translating written prompts into eight-second 720p videos that feel almost handcrafted.
Users can generate content directly through the Gemini platform — either via the web or mobile apps. The experience is pretty straightforward: users enter a text-based prompt, and Veo 2 returns a video in 16:9 landscape format, delivered as an MP4 file. These aren’t just generic clips — they can reflect creative, abstract, or highly specific scenarios, making the tool especially useful for content creators, marketers, or anyone experimenting with visual storytelling.
Also Read: Getting Started With Google Gemini: A Beginner’s Guide
To ensure transparency, each video is embedded with SynthID — a digital watermark developed by Google’s DeepMind. The watermark is invisible to the human eye but persists across editing, compression, and sharing. It identifies the video as AI-generated, addressing concerns around misinformation and media authenticity.
While Veo 2 is still in its early phases of public rollout, the technology is part of a broader push by Google to democratize advanced AI tools. With text-to-image, code generation, and now video creation integrated into Gemini, Google is positioning the platform as a full-spectrum creative assistant.
Access to Veo 2 starts today and will continue expanding in the coming weeks. Interested users can try it out at gemini.google.com or through the Gemini app on Android and iOS.
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