In a landmark move set to reshape the future of customer engagement in financial services across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), intella, Egypt’s leading Arabic speech intelligence company, has announced a strategic partnership with Visa, the global payments technology giant. The collaboration aims to revolutionize conversational AI for financial institutions by delivering deeply localized, dialect-aware solutions tailored to the region’s linguistic diversity.
Founded in 2021 by Nour AlTaher and Omar Mansour, intella has rapidly emerged as the market leader in Arabic-first AI models, specializing in dialectal speech recognition and natural language understanding. Its proprietary technologies, including a dialectal automatic speech recognition (ASR) engine and Ziila, an advanced conversational AI agent, are designed to empower enterprise contact centers with real-time insights, improved customer satisfaction, and enhanced operational efficiency.
The partnership between Visa and intella goes beyond conventional technology integration. It directly tackles a long-standing challenge in the region: the “intelligence gap” created by generic AI models that fail to accurately interpret the 25+ distinct Arabic dialects spoken across MENA. Additionally, many institutions still rely on manual sampling of customer calls, limiting their ability to extract meaningful insights.
intella’s AI platform is engineered to overcome both obstacles. By analyzing every customer interaction with unmatched dialectal precision, it transforms previously untapped conversational data into actionable intelligence. This enables Visa’s partner banks to shift from reactive customer service models to proactive, data-driven decision-making.
Nour AlTaher, co-founder and CEO of intella, stated:
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. We are not just providing a tool; we are unlocking the real voice of the customer for the entire regional banking ecosystem. This collaboration will empower financial leaders to make strategic decisions with unprecedented clarity, driving growth and innovation based on every customer conversation.
Visa’s vast network will gain access to intella’s full product ecosystem, beginning with intellaCX, a platform that converts unstructured call data into strategic assets for compliance, agent performance, and product development. The partnership also sets the stage for broader adoption of Ziila, intella’s AI-powered virtual agent, designed to deliver seamless and intelligent customer experiences.
Basma Berti, Vice President for Visa Consulting & Analytics, said:
We are thrilled to embark on this collaborative journey with intella. Leveraging the expertise of Visa Consulting & Analytics, we aim to co-develop and enrich conversational AI solutions tailored specifically to the aspirations of our partners across the MENA region.
Visa Implementation Services will oversee the deployment of these solutions, ensuring that the partnership evolves into a shared commitment to expanding the capabilities of Arabic conversational AI. The goal is to deliver localized, innovative customer experiences at scale, supporting digital transformation and inclusive growth throughout the region.
The partnership follows intella’s recent US$12.5 million Series A funding round, which was oversubscribed and aimed at accelerating the company’s expansion across MENA. The funding will be used to deepen enterprise capabilities, enhance AI model development for Arabic dialects, and scale operations to meet growing demand.
