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Saudi Arabia Plans To Swap Oil Production For Gaming
The Kingdom is going all in with a massive new game development program.
As Saudi Arabia rapidly transitions from an oil-reliant economy, the government has begun investing in several tech-centric and sustainable projects. With a disproportionately young population, 21 million of which are gamers, officials have recently decided to stake $38 billion on building a local gaming industry from scratch.
The Savvy Games Group — a subsidiary of the Kingdom’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) — will help Saudi Arabia develop and publish its game titles while building a home-grown gaming ecosystem in the capital, Riyadh.
Also Read: DDoS Attacks Are A Growing Threat In Gaming
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has already invested billions of dollars into the likes of Nintendo, Activision Blizzard, and Tencent. In a recent interview with Bloomberg News, the CEO of Savvy, Brian Ward, said that the company would look for opportunities to “work together on publishing in (the Middle East and North Africa), run their Esports businesses, or develop new IP together”.
The PIF’s recent round of acquisitions and an extensive portfolio of investments suggest that Saudi Arabia will continue on its aggressive mission to play alongside industry giants such as Microsoft and Sony.
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.
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.
Visa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon
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