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Saudi Arabia Will Be Home To A $5BN Floating City
The superyacht, to be named Pangeos, will have room for 60,000 guests along with shopping malls and beach clubs.
An Italian design studio called Lazzarini has begun a massive project to design and eventually build a $5 billion “terayacht”. The colossal floating city will be based in Saudi Arabia, and will have the ability to host 60,000 people.
As if the sheer size of this craft wasn’t headline-grabbing enough, the yacht, named Pangeos, will be shaped like a giant sea turtle.
According to Lazzarini, Pangeos is named “after the supercontinent that existed millions of years ago during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras.”
The design studio went on to add: “Translating this into a somewhat futuristic expression, Pangeos extends its length for 550 meters (1,800 ft) and measures 610 meters (2,000 ft) at its widest point — the wings. If realized, the turtle-shaped vessel will become the world’s largest structure ever built.”
The floating city will be home to 19 luxury villas and 64 apartments on each of the turtle’s wings. Lazzarini expects to pump $8 billion into construction, creating the largest-ever floating object after an eight-year build period.
The design of Pangeos is based around a main square that resembles a giant sports stadium, which extends into a wide terraced villa area with private houses, shops, and other buildings, plus a rooftop terrace with an upper “shell” zone for landing flying vehicles.
Also Read: Saudi Arabia Reveals Plans To Build The City Of The Future
In the lower spaces, 30,000 cells provide an unsinkable floating platform, with the bulk of the vessel being constructed from steel.
As well as being notable for its outrageous size and head-turning design, Pangeos will offer unrivaled luxury for guests, with a rooftop garden, mall, beach club, and a massive central shipyard with direct access to the sea.
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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