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Tarabut Teams With FLOOSS For Faster Loan Approvals
The new Income Verification product is the first and fastest digital loan service in Bahrain.
Leading MENA Open Banking company Tarabut has announced a collaboration with Bahrain-based digital lending platform FLOOSS.
The pioneering partnership has created Bahrain’s first Open Banking-enabled digital lending service, significantly reducing loan approval times to mere minutes using Tarabut’s Income Verification solution.
Previously, loans could take up to two weeks to approve. By leveraging the latest Open Banking APIs, FLOOSS customers now enjoy a seamless lending journey with enhanced security and no longer need to submit salary certification during the application process manually.
Abdulla Almoayed, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Tarabut, said, “We are proud to announce our latest partnership with FLOOSS, one of Bahrain’s leading lending platforms. Together, we are promoting financial inclusion and developing Bahrain’s financial infrastructure in line with the country’s plans for a robust financial ecosystem. Everyone should have access to affordable and efficient lending facilities, and this partnership is a crucial step towards that goal”.
Fawaz Ghazal, Chief Executive Officer of FLOOSS, said, “The customer lending experience and journey must be reimagined; customers expect more from their financial service providers. Working with the team at Tarabut, FLOOSS has implemented a customer-first solution that improves lending processing times to a few minutes and more seamlessly than any other lenders, anytime and anywhere. We are proud of the innovative work and look forward to more announcements with our partner, Tarabut, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia soon”.
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In Bahrain, demand for personal loans is steadily growing and now totals BD 5.7 billion or 38.2% of GDP. As Tarabut collaborates with more lenders, financial enterprises and banks across the MENA region, the payment landscape is rapidly becoming more diverse and modern. Open Banking technology is a key feature of modern financial infrastructures and helps businesses maximize revenue, reduce operational costs and enrich customer experiences.
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.
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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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