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Samsung Releases Food, An AI-Powered Smart Recipe App
The app uses a database from Samsung-owned Whisk, whose website now redirects to the new app.
Tech giant Samsung has unveiled a new app, known as Food, offering “personalized, AI-powered food and recipes” in eight languages and 104 countries.
The app uses the Whisk food database — also owned by Samsung and now rebranded — and seems a smart move for the Korean electronics giant, considering its vast range of domestic appliances.
Food allows users to search some 160,000 international recipes, which can be saved and curated into eating plans. The app works on smartphones as well as Samsung Family Hub appliances such as fridges and freezers, allowing families to plan ingredient lists and grocery deliveries.
Food can provide recipe recommendations based on available items and has a “personalize recipe” function that uses AI to create bespoke vegan or vegetarian versions of popular dishes. Nutritional breakdowns can be viewed at any time, and users can add items directly to shopping carts at e-commerce checkouts. In addition, using connected cooking, ovens can be preheated and timer set on compatible devices.
Samsung has ambitions to add over one million users to the app worldwide. Although numerous recipe apps already exist (Paprika, Mealtime, Yummly, etc..), Samsung may have an edge due to its position in the smart appliances sector, making it a known quantity to consumers.
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Integration with Samsung Health is also planned for future updates, syncing with parameters like BMI and calorie consumption, plus offering diet management suggestions. By 2024, the app will also incorporate AI vision tech, allowing Samsung Food to recognize items through smartphone cameras and provide instant nutrition information.
Samsung Food is available to download now on Android and iOS, or you can head to the official website to create an account.
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.
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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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