Oman Arab Bank (OAB) and global payments technology provider BPC are celebrating 10 years of partnership, marking a decade of payments modernisation that has transformed the bank’s card issuing and acquiring capabilities while strengthening its digital payments infrastructure.

Since the partnership began, OAB has evolved from offering local card services to a broader, modern payments proposition. The bank has introduced contactless cards, enabled instant card issuance and recently implemented Visa tokenisation, strengthening the foundation for more secure digital payments and future digital-first customer experiences.

The modernised platform enables OAB to connect seamlessly with local and international payment schemes, support settlement and reconciliation processes, and accelerate the launch of new debit card products. It has also strengthened payment acceptance across the bank’s acquiring business, providing greater scalability to support future growth.

For customers, the transformation has expanded access to secure and convenient payment services. Visa tokenisation enables safer transactions through digital wallets and online channels by replacing sensitive card information with tokenised credentials. Customers can also benefit from internationally enabled cards, contactless payment functionality and faster card issuance, renewal and replacement through self-service channels.

OAB has also broadened its premium card portfolio for affluent customers while making modern payment solutions more widely accessible across its retail banking base.

Tariq AlZadjali, chief technology officer at Oman Arab Bank, said: “Our partnership with BPC has played an important role in the evolution of our cards and payments business over the decade. What started as a need to support international card issuing has become a broader transformation that has strengthened how we serve customers across Oman. At OAB, innovation is always centred around making banking faster, smarter and more accessible. The introduction of tokenization and instant card issuance is another step in redefining convenience for customers, while reinforcing our vision of accessible banking.”

Throughout the partnership, OAB expanded its acquiring capabilities to support Visa, Mastercard and American Express, while modernising card issuance and personalisation, introducing contactless payments, integrating Visa Token Service (VTS) and strengthening processing across its ATM and point-of-sale (POS) network.

The bank also introduced instant card issuance through its ATM network, allowing customers to issue, renew or replace cards and manage PINs via self-service channels. The service supports multiple card types, including Classic, Advantage, Platinum, Elite and the Maal card, Oman’s domestic payment scheme sponsored by the Central Bank of Oman.

Beyond card services, OAB has enhanced its ATM and Interactive Teller Machine (ITM) network with additional banking capabilities, including local and international transfers, bill payments, donations, cheque book requests, contact detail updates, PIN management, spending limit changes, card payments and access to account statements.

The recent implementation of Visa tokenisation also positions the bank to expand further into e-commerce, digital-first checkout experiences and online payment services, while work is underway with BPC to extend fraud monitoring across digital banking, core banking and corporate systems through a unified security platform.

Usama El Sayed, managing director for the Middle East and Africa at BPC, said: “We are proud to celebrate the achievements with Oman Arab Bank and support the bank on its payments transformation journey. With SmartVista, OAB has gained a scalable and future-ready platform that continues to help the bank deliver secure, innovative and convenient payment experiences to customers across Oman.”

Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence of the UAE, and Chairman of The Executive Council of Dubai, has approved a package of new government strategies and projects worth Dhs18bn aimed at strengthening the emirate’s infrastructure, cultural sector, investment climate and public services.

The initiatives, approved during a meeting of Dubai’s Executive Council, span culture, transport, trade, Emiratisation, urban planning, digital governance and Islamic finance as the emirate pursues its long-term D33 economic agenda.

Among the largest projects is the First Al Khail Street Development Plan, which will create a 15-km elevated corridor running parallel to Sheikh Zayed Road.

Construction is scheduled to begin in Q3 2027 and conclude by Q4 2030.

The project is expected to serve 2.6 million residents, improve access to areas including Al Barsha, Al Quoz, Business Bay and Meydan, reduce peak-hour travel times on Sheikh Zayed Road by 51 per cent and increase road capacity by around 9,000 vehicles per hour.

The Executive Council also approved the Dubai Cultural Strategy 2033, which seeks to increase the cultural sector’s contribution to the emirate’s gross domestic product to 5.4 per cent while attracting more than 6,000 international creatives and supporting over 6,000 local talents.

The strategy includes 40 initiatives covering cultural innovation, heritage preservation and talent development, and aims to expand Dubai’s cultural assets by more than 200 per cent.

In support of its ambition to become a global investment hub, Dubai approved the launch of a unified Investor Register, allowing businesses and investors to operate across multiple free zones and mainland jurisdictions without repeated registration procedures.

The register is intended to simplify investment processes and support the Dubai Economic Agenda D33, which targets Dhs650bn in foreign direct investment by 2033.

Dubai Population Now initiative

Dubai also approved the “Dubai Population Now” initiative, a real-time population monitoring system powered by artificial intelligence that will provide live demographic data to support planning across housing, healthcare, education and transport.

Dubai’s population reached 4.58 million by the end of 2025, an increase of 332,000, or 7.5 per cent, from the previous year, according to government data.

Other measures include an Emirati Talents Strategy for private education, targeting the employment of 3,000 UAE nationals in the sector by 2033, and a new visual identity for Dubai’s address system, which will be rolled out across 186 areas by 2029.

The Executive Council also approved the establishment of the Global Centre for Technology and Innovation in Islamic Finance, to be managed by Dubai International Financial Centre in partnership with global organisations.

The centre aims to strengthen Dubai’s position in Islamic financial technology through research, innovation programmes and talent development as the global Islamic finance industry continues to expand.

Sheikh Hamdan said the initiatives reflected Dubai’s commitment to planning for future growth while enhancing quality of life and reinforcing its position as a global centre for business, culture and innovation.

Read: Dubai’s Crown Prince calls for stronger economic resilience amid global shifts

US digital sports platform Fanatics has entered the UAE’s regulated commercial gaming market through a joint venture with Momentum Group after the country’s gaming regulator approved a change in control of Momentum’s licensed entities, the companies said on Thursday.

Under the agreement, Momentum’s existing UAE commercial gaming licences and operations will become part of the joint venture, combining the local company’s regional operations with Fanatics’ sportsbook, iGaming and technology capabilities.

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The joint venture will operate and expand the commercial gaming activities currently licensed to Momentum in the UAE, including iGaming, sportsbook and gaming-related content websites.

The UAE’s General Commercial Gaming Regulatory Authority (GCGRA) approved the change in control of Momentum’s existing licensed entities, a requirement under the country’s regulatory framework for commercial gaming.

The deal marks Fanatics’ entry into the UAE commercial gaming market. The company currently operates licensed sportsbook and iGaming businesses across multiple US states.

“The UAE has built one of the world’s most carefully regulated commercial gaming markets, and this joint venture is a reflection of the confidence that brings,” Scott Burton, chief operating officer of Momentum Group, said in a statement.

Conor Grant, president of Fanatics Gaming, said the company was making a long-term commitment to the UAE market.

“We are entering this market for the long term, committed to building something genuinely category-defining together,” Grant said.

The companies said they plan to invest in technology, product development and customer experience, while advancing responsible gaming and player protection in line with the GCGRA’s regulatory framework.

The partnership will also seek to expand access to regulated gaming products in the UAE and contribute to the country’s digital economy, the companies said.

The UAE established the General Commercial Gaming Regulatory Authority in 2023 to oversee and regulate commercial gaming activities, as the country develops a regulated gaming sector.

Medcare Hospitals and Medical Centres, the premium healthcare provider under Aster DM Healthcare Group, has signed a strategic partnership with InterSystems to implement InterSystems IntelliCare, becoming the first healthcare provider in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) to adopt a next-generation, native AI-first electronic health record (EHR) platform.

The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed by Alisha Moopen, MD and group CEO of Aster DM Healthcare, and Ali Abi Raad, MD, InterSystems Middle East, India and South Africa, in the presence of senior officials from both organisations.

Read more-Aster DM Healthcare unveils women’s health platform across UAE hospitals, clinics

The implementation marks a significant milestone in Medcare’s digital transformation strategy, reinforcing its commitment to leveraging advanced technologies to improve clinical outcomes, operational efficiency and patient-centred care.

Unlike conventional EHR platforms that integrate artificial intelligence as an additional feature, InterSystems IntelliCare has been designed with AI embedded at its core. The platform unifies clinical workflows while supporting interoperability across hospitals, clinics, laboratories and insurers. It is also designed to reduce administrative workloads, allowing physicians to dedicate more time to patient care.

AI to enhance clinical efficiency and patient care

Commenting on the announcement, Alisha Moopen, MD and group CEO of Aster DM Healthcare, said: “We have always believed in equipping our doctors and healthcare professionals with the most advanced technologies and transformative solutions that enable them to put our patients first and ensure the best outcomes for every individual who seeks care with us. With Medcare becoming the first healthcare provider in the UAE to implement a next-generation, AI-first electronic health record platform, we are taking a bold step towards redefining how care is delivered.

“As the future of healthcare lies in intelligent systems that augment human expertise rather than simply digitise existing processes, we are confident that IntelliCare will empower our physicians and caregivers with advanced tools that reduce administrative burden, unlock meaningful insights, and enable more time to be dedicated to what matters most, our patients.”

The platform will streamline access to patient information, automate clinical documentation and enable clinicians to retrieve patient histories through AI-powered information retrieval and natural language interaction. Future releases will introduce agentic AI capabilities designed to support clinical decision-making and workflow management while maintaining human oversight.

Ali Abi Raad, MD, InterSystems Middle East, India and South Africa, said: “Today’s milestone builds on a long-standing partnership, with Medcare trusting InterSystems as an innovation ally since 2020. Transitioning to InterSystems IntelliCare is the natural, innovation-driven progression of Medcare’s mature TrakCare footprint. This milestone also marks a pivotal moment as the broader Aster DM Healthcare relationship expands beyond the UAE market.”

Supporting Medcare’s long-term innovation strategy

For patients, the platform is expected to deliver more personalised and efficient healthcare by enabling physicians to spend less time on administrative tasks and more time interacting directly with patients. A unified patient record is also expected to improve continuity of care, support more informed treatment decisions and reduce duplication across the healthcare journey.

Dr Shanila Laiju, group CEO of Medcare Hospitals and Medical Centres, said: “Artificial intelligence is reshaping healthcare globally, and Medcare is committed to ensuring our patients and physicians benefit from the very latest advancements.

“While many healthcare providers have successfully integrated AI into specific aspects of their operations, IntelliCare represents a fundamentally different approach. As the first healthcare provider in the UAE to adopt an AI-first EHR platform, we are embedding intelligence directly into the clinical ecosystem. This allows our physicians to access insights faster, streamline workflows, and spend more time engaging with patients, ultimately enhancing both clinical care and the overall patient experience.”

Since its launch in 2025, IntelliCare has been deployed at Indonesia’s EMC Healthcare, where it supports operations across eight hospitals, and has also become the first unified AI EHR platform to receive the EU Class IIa Medical Device Regulation (MDR) certification for clinical safety.

Inception42 has launched Seraj, a new enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) model developed with Microsoft to strengthen Arabic-language capabilities for government and enterprise applications across the region.

Available through Compass, Core42’s sovereign AI platform, Seraj is built on OpenAI’s GPT-4.1 model and has been enhanced with advanced Arabic language understanding, cultural awareness and enterprise-specific capabilities while maintaining multilingual performance.

The model has been designed to address a long-standing challenge facing organisations across the Middle East, where frontier AI systems have typically delivered stronger performance in English than in Arabic, limiting their effectiveness in sectors requiring linguistic precision, dialect recognition and cultural context.

Rather than building a new Arabic-first model from scratch, Inception42 applied targeted mid-training techniques using curated Arabic datasets covering linguistics, cultural knowledge, safety scenarios and domain-specific enterprise content. The company said this approach significantly improves Arabic performance while preserving GPT-4.1’s reasoning and multilingual capabilities.

Seraj supports a range of enterprise use cases, including document analysis, summarisation, translation, question answering, workflow automation, bilingual Arabic-English applications, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and knowledge-intensive tasks across sectors such as government, education, legal services, Islamic studies, media and financial services.

Ashish Koshy, CEO of Inception42, said: “Seraj is a gamechanger. Organisations across the region have been forced to choose between global AI capability and meaningful Arabic performance. Seraj changes that equation. From government services and legal analysis to customer engagement and knowledge management, the model is designed to help organisations deploy Arabic AI at scale with confidence.”

Rima Semaan, director of AI and enterprise solutions at Microsoft UAE, said: “Microsoft’s collaboration with Inception42 on Seraj reflects a shared commitment to expanding the real-world impact of AI across the region. AI will create the greatest impact when it can understand and engage people in the languages they use every day. Seraj represents an important step forward in making advanced AI more relevant, accessible, and effective for Arabic-speaking organisations.”

She added that combining frontier AI capabilities with regional linguistic and cultural intelligence supports the UAE’s broader ambitions to accelerate responsible AI adoption across governments, enterprises and critical industries.

The launch reflects growing demand across the Middle East for AI systems capable of operating effectively in Arabic across complex enterprise environments where accuracy, trust and contextual understanding are critical.