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Saudi-Based Mozn Uses AI To Detect Money Laundering & Fraud
The company combats a wide range of financial crimes using pattern recognition and advanced algorithms.
Saudi Arabia’s Mozn, an AI platform founded by Dr. Mohammed Alhussein, uses advanced artificial intelligence algorithms to detect and prevent financial crimes and increase compliance.
The company’s advanced platform is known as FOCAL. It can sift through masses of financial data using pattern recognition and other advanced techniques to spot fraud and money laundering in real time.
Dr. Alhussein developed the FOCAL platform by studying anti-money-laundering and anti-terrorism legislation and compliance and quickly realized that traditional (often manual) checks and safeguards were too slow to act.
Mozn’s AI technology uses name-matching algorithms uniquely optimized for the Arabic language and reconciles its findings against 1,300 international and regional sanctions. Meanwhile, the system’s anti-fraud functionality detects suspicious patterns by confirming payee identities against the records of destination accounts — a process that is said to reduce investigation times by up to 95%.
Also Read: A Guide To Digital Payment Methods In The Middle East
Although the platform was launched in Saudi Arabia, CEO Dr. Mohammed Alhussein recently announced plans to expand into the UAE, noting that the company’s long-term goal would be to develop operations further across the GCC. “The UAE has been making significant strides in enhancing its AML compliance and combating financial fraud, and Mozn entering UAE market will help accelerate these efforts,” Alhussein stated in a press release. “We are excited to begin this next chapter in Mozn’s growth journey as we enter the broader GCC market through our UAE office”.
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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