News

Spotify Is Now Available In 80+ Additional Countries

Published

6 years ago

March 1, 2021

spotify is now available in 80 additional countries

Spotify, the world’s largest audio streaming platform, has recently become available in more than 80 additional countries across Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean.

Thanks to the expansion, Spotify will now be able to potentially attract as much as 1 billion new listeners, who can enjoy its growing catalog of songs and podcasts in 36 extra languages. “These moves represent Spotify’s broadest market expansion to date,” stated the Swedish company.

Currently, Spotify users from all newly supported countries have full access to the streaming platform’s global music catalog, but its podcast catalog is not yet available in certain locations. To make its services more attractive to local audiences, Spotify is determined to work with local creators and partners to expands its music offering by including regional artists.

Spotify has been with us since 2008. The service now enjoys 345 million monthly active users (155 million of which are premium paying subscribers). “For the first time ever, we have the technology to connect the world through audio,” said Chief Executive Officer Daniel Ek at an investor event known as #StreamOn.

During the event, Ek talked about Spotify’s desire to become a full-fledged audio streaming platform offering all kinds of audio content. The service is already home to around 2 million podcasts, and its audiobook library is growing at a similarly impressive pace. Spotify has also announced dozens of new original series, such as sports shows and celebrity talk shows.

Also Read: Apple Likely To Release 8K VR Headset In 2022

In addition to the market expansion, the company has also announced Spotify HiFi which will be available later this year. Spotify HiFi changes the way people listen to music as it delivers all tracks in CD-quality, lossless format, giving users much more depth and clarity.

Newly supported countries:

Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Botswana, Brunei Darussalam, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chad, Comoros, Côte d’Ivoire, Curaçao, Djibouti, Dominica, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, Fiji, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Grenada, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Kenya, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Lesotho, Liberia, Macau, Madagascar, Malawi, Maldives, Mali, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Micronesia, Mongolia, Mozambique, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, Samoa, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

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.

Published

2 weeks ago

August 27, 2026

Dana Saadeh

visa's return to syria starts with a test and a bank in lebanon

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.