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Visa And Whish Money Partner To Expand Digital Payments In Lebanon
The first-of-its-kind partnership enables Whish Money to integrate Visa’s payment tech, advancing secure, scalable fintech solutions for over a million users.
Visa has entered a strategic partnership with Lebanon-based fintech Whish Money to enhance digital payment capabilities across Lebanon and international markets. The collaboration, announced at Whish Money’s newly opened campus in Beirut, positions the fintech company to integrate Visa’s advanced technologies into its platform — bringing improved speed, security, and global reach to its more than 1 million users.
The partnership marks a regional milestone: it is the first time Visa has partnered with an e-wallet provider in the Levant. Leila Serhan, Visa’s senior vice president and group country manager for North Africa, Levant, and Pakistan, described the alliance as one rooted in shared values of trust and innovation. She emphasized that Visa’s vast global network — spanning over 200 countries — will help accelerate Whish Money’s international expansion.
Whish Money, which has already established a global footprint, sees this agreement as a major step in its evolution. CEO and co-founder Toufic Koussa called the deal a “significant milestone,” citing the fintech’s strong compliance and security infrastructure as key enablers. He also noted Visa’s rigorous due diligence process as a sign of confidence in Whish Money’s operational maturity.
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By embedding Visa’s digital payments infrastructure, the partnership will allow Whish Money to offer more seamless, efficient, and secure services — bolstering its standing in both domestic and global markets. The two companies plan to jointly raise the bar for fintech innovation, particularly in regions where reliable digital financial services remain underdeveloped.
As Lebanon’s fintech ecosystem gains momentum, collaborations like this signal a broader trend: global payments leaders are increasingly looking to regional innovators to co-create the next generation of digital financial solutions.
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Microsoft Plans $10 Billion-Plus Gulf Expansion Despite Iran Conflict
Security is shaping Microsoft’s approach, from resilience work with governments to what it will say about how the money splits by country.
Microsoft is planning more than $10 billion of investment across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait through 2030, Vice Chair and President Brad Smith told Reuters, calling the spending schedule aggressive. The Iranian conflict that began on February 28 has not persuaded the company to scale back.
“We’re sustaining all the investments we planned to make before this conflict started, and we are in fact adding to them,” Smith said. The $10 billion-plus total does not, however, show how large those additions are.
The investment, which Smith described as part of Microsoft’s continued infrastructure expansion, is aimed at cloud and AI infrastructure and at the company’s growing regional operations. Microsoft also intends to put more than $400 million into subsea and terrestrial connectivity across the Middle East by 2030.
The spending fits the region’s own ambitions too. Gulf governments have been investing heavily in AI infrastructure as part of a push to diversify their economies beyond oil and gas and turn themselves into global technology hubs. Major cloud and AI providers have been drawn in part by the land and relatively low-cost energy on offer.
Microsoft is widening its partnerships with regional AI companies, though not on identical terms. In 2024, it invested $1.5 billion in Abu Dhabi-based G42 for a minority stake, and Smith currently sits on G42’s board. Saudi Arabia’s Humain and Qatar’s Qai are working with Microsoft on selected priority areas, but Smith said the company does not plan to make capital investments in either.
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The conflict has added another strand to Microsoft’s work in the region. Since it began, Smith said, the company has supported regional partners with digital resilience assessments, and it is now working with Gulf countries through a digital resilience initiative focused on preparedness and the protection of critical data.
So far, the company has given no country-by-country breakdown of the investment, citing security among other factors. So while the headline figure is public, how Microsoft divides the spending among the four countries is not.
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