Cairo-based intella, a deep-tech company specializing in Arabic-first speech intelligence, has announced a strategic partnership with global payments leader Visa. The collaboration aims to revolutionize conversational AI for financial institutions across the Middle East and North Africa by co-developing and deploying solutions tailored to the region’s complex linguistic landscape.
Addressing The Regional Intelligence Gap
The partnership directly targets a critical “Intelligence Gap” that generic AI models fail to address in the MENA region. Many existing solutions struggle to accurately comprehend the nuances of over 25 distinct Arabic dialects. Furthermore, financial institutions typically rely on manually analyzing a small, random sample of customer calls, leaving a vast amount of conversational data untapped. Intella’s technology is engineered to overcome these challenges by analyzing every customer interaction with high dialectal accuracy, transforming unstructured data into actionable intelligence.
A Strategic Validation For Arabic-First AI
This collaboration with Visa serves as a significant validation of intella’s foundational approach: building AI models from the ground up specifically for the Arab world. By providing complete visibility into customer conversations, the technology empowers banks to shift from a reactive customer service model to a proactive, data-driven strategy for growth and innovation.
“This is a pivotal moment. Visa’s partnership with intella validates our foundational belief: that true understanding of the Arab world cannot be an afterthought, it must be the core of the technology,” said Nour Taher, Co-Founder and CEO of intella. “We are not just providing a tool; we are unlocking the real voice of the customer for the entire regional banking ecosystem.”
Deploying A Full Product Ecosystem
Through the partnership, Visa’s extensive network of partner banks will gain access to intella’s full suite of products. The initial rollout will feature intellaCX, a platform that converts unstructured call data into strategic assets for compliance monitoring, agent performance evaluation, and product development. The collaboration will also pave the way for adopting Ziila, intella’s advanced AI agent, to build next-generation customer experiences.
“We are thrilled to embark on this collaborative journey with intella, leveraging the expertise of Visa Consulting & Analytics to co-develop and enrich conversational AI solutions tailored specifically to address the aspirations of our partners across the MENA region,” said Basma Berti, VP for Visa Consulting & Analytics. “Together, we are shaping a powerful unified solution that will empower financial institutions to deliver truly localized and innovative customer experiences at scale.”
About intella
intella is the leading Arabic speech intelligence company, specializing in building Arabic-first AI models to cater to the nuanced needs of enterprise contact centers in the MENA region. The company’s suite of models, including its dialectal ASR engine and the conversational AI agent, Ziila, provides the foundational technology for enterprises to analyze their customer conversations and build next-generation customer experiences. This enables businesses to unlock data-driven insights to improve customer satisfaction, ensure quality control, and increase operational efficiency.
About Visa
Visa is a world leader in digital payments, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories. Its mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses and economies to thrive.
Source: Zawya
