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Whish Money Partners With Mastercard For Cross Border Payments

Users in Lebanon can send money abroad to over 50 countries, while Lebanese people living overseas can send money home.

Published

11 months ago

August 25, 2025

whish money partners with mastercard for cross-border payments

Whish Money, Lebanon’s leading e-wallet and personal finance app, has partnered with Mastercard to unlock faster inbound and outbound remittances for consumers across the country. The tie-up taps into Mastercard Move, the company’s global money movement network, to allow users in Lebanon to send funds to more than 50 countries — and for Lebanese abroad to send money home in near real time.

Through the Whish Money mobile app, users can now make cost-effective transfers to a wide range of destinations. Depending on the recipient’s market, senders can choose how funds are delivered: directly into bank accounts, mobile wallets, or collected as cash. Customers can also fund their Whish Money wallets with cards as well as cash, expanding convenience for everyday users. This marks Mastercard’s first collaboration with a mobile wallet in Lebanon to facilitate remittances.

“Many people in Lebanon rely on remittances from their family members abroad to meet their basic needs. In this challenging economic situation, international money transfer services provide a vital inflow of foreign currency into Lebanon. Thanks to Mastercard Move, we can now offer fast, efficient and secure remittances to Lebanese people,” said Toufic Koussa, Co-founder and CEO of Whish Money.

Onur Kursun, Executive Vice President of Commercial and New Payment Flows, EEMEA at Mastercard, added: “Our collaboration will give Whish Money the reach, transparency and speed needed to scale its cross-border business and address consumer demand for sending and receiving funds internationally. Meanwhile, it will enable us to expand our payment network and introduce market firsts for inbound and outbound money transfers in Lebanon. We look forward to working together to improve the lives of Lebanese people and address their everyday needs”.

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According to World Bank estimates, Lebanon was the third-largest recipient of remittances in the MENA region in 2022, receiving around US$6.4 billion. Only Egypt (US$28.3 billion) and Morocco (US$11.2 billion) recorded larger inflows. For Lebanese residents, remittances are both a lifeline and a source of foreign currency, meaning the Whish Mastercard collaboration could soon prove to be transformative.

Related Topics:FinTech Lebanon Mastercard Whish Money

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A Three-Clinic Network Bets Dubai Is Ready For Longevity Medicine

Longevium has enlisted nearly 100 clinicians and created an AI platform in a bid to sell biological-age tracking as a medicine, not a wellness service.

Published

2 days ago

July 13, 2026

Dana Saadeh

a three-clinic network bets dubai is ready for longevity medicine

Dubai has been busily creating the scaffolding for a longevity industry, including a dedicated regulatory authority and a health market deep enough to sustain it. Now the clinics are arriving.

Longevium, a longevity clinic network, has opened three locations across the city: a flagship at Triple Seven Mall on Jumeirah 3, and branches in Jumeirah Lake Towers and Jumeirah Village Circle. Together they house a multidisciplinary team of nearly 100 physicians and specialists offering what the company bills as “a measurable medical system for longevity”.

longevity dubai clinic launch

The pitch is that longevity medicine should look less like a wellness menu and more like continuous clinical care. Each patient’s biological age assessment, laboratory results, body composition, cardiovascular risk factors, metabolic markers, and lifestyle data feed into a single profile, with a proprietary AI platform helping physicians track progress and adjust protocols against the patient’s own biomarkers.

“Healthy aging must be approached clinically through diagnostics, biomarkers, physician supervision, longitudinal tracking, and protocols tailored to the individual,” said Dr. Ksenia Butova, Longevium’s founder and CEO. “Our goal is to help patients understand their health trajectory before disease develops, and then actively change that trajectory”.

The treatment list spans peptide-based protocols, exosome therapies, stem cell approaches, GLP-1 metabolic optimization, hormone balance programs, cardiovascular prevention, and regenerative aesthetics — a model built for the entrepreneurs, executives, and international patients the clinic says want measurable results rather than generic wellness. A signature offering, Longevity Day, compresses biomarker testing, ultrasound and vascular imaging, specialist consultations, IV therapy, and a personalized optimization roadmap into a single three-hour visit.

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“Here, longevity, biotechnology, AI, prevention, and regenerative medicine are converging into a single ecosystem,” said Butova. “This is why Longevium was built in Dubai, and why we believe the UAE can become a global reference point for longevity medicine”.

The emirate established the Dubai Longevity Authority in 2026 to oversee its longevity, wellness, and advanced health sectors, and the Dubai Health Authority reported insured beneficiaries exceeding 4.9 million in 2025, up around 6.5%, with insurance claims reaching approximately 49.6 million, up around 13.5%.