Payments company Visa is set to restart operations in Syria after more than a decade after signing an agreement with the country’s central bank.
Visa will work with the central bank to “implement a strategic roadmap designed to help Syria rapidly integrate into the modern global digital economy,” the company said in a statement on Friday.
Following the downfall of the Bashar Al Assad regime a year ago, Syria has since begun to accelerate the reintegration of its economy under the new government led by President Ahmad Al Shara.
In June, the country completed its first electronic transfer via the Swift system, from which it had been excluded for 14 years during the civil war.
Visa’s re-entry also follows the partial lifting of US sanctions on Syria following Mr Al Shara’s meeting with US President Donald Trump in Washington DC last month.
The company, which has its headquarters in San Francisco, said its immediate priority in Syria would be to help “licensed financial institutions to develop a robust and secure payments foundation”.
This would include “issuing payment cards and enabling digital wallets using global standards like EMV chips and tokenisation”, it added.
Syrian Central Bank governor Abdulkader Husrieh called the partnership “a new chapter of hope and opportunity for the Syrian economy”.
Damascus has looked to overhaul its financial system to attract investment and also restore confidence in the severely undervalued pound.
In August, the Central Bank removed two zeroes from its currency to shore up its purchasing power after it collapsed to record lows under the previous government.
The pound lost more than 99 per cent of its value since 2011, with the exchange rate now at around 11,000 pounds to the US dollar, compared to 50 before the civil war.
However, the partial lifting of sanctions and the government’s attempts to bring investment back has proven successful.
Earlier this week Syria held its first major international oil and gas exhibition since the fall of the former regime amid growing interest from international oil companies in rehabilitating Syria.
So far, Damascus has signed a number of agreements in the energy sector, including with US companies ConocoPhillips and Novaterra, the UAE’s Dana Gas, and Qatar’s UCC Holding.
