News

Taager Secures $6.75M To Expand Social eCommerce In MENA

The Pre-Series B funding round was led by Norrsken22 and will allow the company to enhance the platform while strengthening its data tools and team.

Published

2 years ago

February 11, 2025

Nour Nasir

taager secures $6.75 million to expand social ecommerce in mena

Riyadh-based social eCommerce platform Taager has successfully raised $6.75 million in a Pre-Series B funding round. The investment, led by Africa-focused growth fund Norrsken22, will help the company expand its operations further across the Middle East.

Taager allows would-be entrepreneurs to start their own dropshipping business, providing products, storage, shipping, and customer collection. However, unlike traditional platforms, Taager specializes in “social eCommerce” — a business model where products are bought and sold directly through social media platforms.

Social commerce merges online shopping with social interactions, significantly reshaping traditional online customer journeys. Globally, social eCommerce is projected to generate $2.5 trillion in revenue this year. In the MENA, it has already surpassed $14 billion, accounting for over 30% of all eCommerce sales.

Although MENA’s young, tech-savvy population is already purchasing products via social eCommerce, would-be entrepreneurs often face challenges starting a business in the region. Supply chains are complex, capital is limited, and gaining insights into the diverse range of consumer bases can be tough.

Taager tackles these pain points by offering an all-in-one platform that provides sellers with access to trending products, pricing and marketing insights, logistics solutions, embedded financing, and multi-market payment processing.

Also Read: Top E-Commerce Websites In The Middle East In 2025

Leveraging data gathered from thousands of merchants and millions of customers, Taager also uses machine learning to enhance product recommendations, optimize pricing, and predict buyer behavior. The company is also integrating generative AI into its operations, using AI-driven sales agents to improve efficiency while keeping costs in check.

The eventual goal is to establish Taager as a central hub for demand generation and data-driven decision-making in MENA’s social eCommerce ecosystem. Mohamed Elhorishy, Taager’s Co-founder and CEO, emphasized the company’s ambitious mission: “Our goal is to make it possible for anyone to launch and scale a successful social eCommerce business. We support women, young entrepreneurs, and low-income individuals in building sustainable sources of income. On average, Taager merchants have seen a 2.5x increase in profitability. Our platform has helped thousands achieve financial independence and stability”.

So far, Taager has supported over 45,000 online social sellers. With this latest round of funding, the company plans to strengthen its data tools, expand its product offerings, and grow its expert team to accelerate its regional impact.

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.