A second scorekeeper

Five source-linked signals from Iran’s technology economy, this week’s registry verifications, and one analysis note. Written by the Tehran Index research desk from primary sources and Persian-language reporting, every figure verified against the Tehran Index registry before publication. Ships every Friday by email; every edition is published here as a permanent page.

The week in numbers

~189,000 toman to the dollar, the free-market rate on file for 21 August 2026. 370 companies in the public registry across 23 sectors. 17.1%, TAP’s share of Iran-represented transactions in the 2025 Nilson Report, up from 14.1%. Seven Iranian payment companies moved up in that report; an eighth held its rank. 40 fintech players mapped in Taline’s Iran gold ecosystem map. 350+ companies confirmed for Elecomp 29, 31 August to 3 September 2026.

This week’s signals

Company · payments. Parsian E-Commerce posts the fastest transaction growth of any Iranian payment processor in the 2025 Nilson Report. TAP, the payment brand it operates, grew its processed transaction count 26% in calendar 2025 against 2024, lifting its share of the transactions attributed to Iranian processors from 14.1% to 17.1% and carrying Parsian E-Commerce to 38th in the Middle East and Africa ranking, third among Iranian PSPs. A three-point share move inside a fixed national pool is a real reallocation, not a rounding effect. We publish the ranks and the shares and hold the absolute transaction count: the figure printed in the Persian relay does not reconcile with the share figures, and the Nilson table itself is not open to us. TI record 18 Aug 2026.

Product · e-commerce. Digikala launches AI and AR virtual try-on for clothing and cosmetics: two features, Virtual Try-On and Virtual Makeup, that render apparel and cosmetics on the shopper’s own photograph before buying. The commercial logic is return rates and conversion in the two categories where fit and shade decide the purchase. Read alongside the AI customer-operations launches we covered in the previous edition, the pattern this summer is Iranian platforms deploying AI where the cost case is immediate rather than where the model risk is high. TI record 18 Aug 2026.

Company · fintech. Taline publishes what it presents as the first map of Iran’s gold ecosystem, placing the chain from mining and refining through manufacturing, financial and technology infrastructure, the banking network, fintechs and end users in a single frame: 40 fintech players, more than 10,000 manufacturing workshops, more than 20,000 gold and jewellery retailers. Its value to an outside analyst is less the headcount than the questions it makes askable: the size of the online gold market, how money and metal move between participants, and where user asset backing is actually held. The counts are the company’s own, structural estimates rather than a registry census, which is how we treat them. TI record 15 Aug 2026.

Infrastructure · telecom. Irancell brings a 5G site online in Gorgan at an announced credit of 303B rial (30.3B toman, about $160,000 at the current free-market rate, ~189,000 toman/$, 21 August 2026) and a rural 4G site in Shirinabad, Aliabad Katul county, at 150B rial (15B toman, about $79,000) drawn from Universal Service Obligation funds, covering 327 households across three villages. The USO line is the part worth tracking: it is the mechanism by which rural coverage economics get closed in Iran, and per-site credits give a first public unit cost against which future provincial buildout announcements can be measured. TI record 16 Aug 2026.

Market · events.Elecomp 29 opens 31 August with 350+ exhibitors across 14 halls and roughly 40,000 square metres at the Tehran International Exhibition grounds, organisers projecting more than 30,000 visitors, themed on artificial intelligence, digital security and the future of Iran’s technology industry. Four programme tracks are new this year, covering banking, wallets and two education and research strands. For anyone mapping the ecosystem from outside, Elecomp remains the single densest annual assembly of Iranian technology firms, and the exhibitor list is a usable sampling frame. TI record 15 Aug 2026.

From the registry: what the desk verified this week

A full-registry collision sweep, across all 369 public records as the registry stood on 20 August, found one true duplicate and one identifier sitting on three companies at once. One genuine duplicate emerged: Dotin and a second record that turned out to be the same core-banking company under a different romanisation of the same Persian name; the duplicate was retired with no facts lost. One national identifier was found attached to three separate records; registry-anchored claims on those rows are blocked until a fresh registry pass settles which company it belongs to. Six lookalike pairs, separated by a single letter in both scripts, joined the desk’s entity traps list, and new registry rows now pass the seven sweep queries before insert.

Optime’s leadership closed from the company’s own material.The company supplied its own investor material, from which the desk closed a name it had deliberately held at surname only rather than guess: MohammadJavad Atabaki, co-founder and chief executive. One conflict was left standing on the record: our row carries a founding year of 2020 and the company’s material says 2022, and it waits on a registry anchor rather than being quietly picked. On this desk a recorded conflict beats a resolved-looking guess.

Ganjeh gains its first public, linkable source. The company’s developer documentation, read directly, self-describes an IoT-based logistics operation with a programmatic API and defines the roles in its network, from courier to station. It confirms the manual-station tier, in which supermarkets, stationery shops, internet cafes and Pishkhan service offices act as pickup points, corroborating a three-layer model previously held only on a document nobody outside could click.

Analysis: Iran’s payment processors now have a second scorekeeper

For most of the time anyone has tried to size Iran’s payments market from outside, there has been exactly one instrument: Shaparak’s own reporting. Issue 1312 of the Nilson Report, covering calendar 2025, gives the market a second reference series, and this week both readings landed at once.

The Nilson movements are small and broad. Seven Iranian payment companies moved up in the ranking: Saman Electronic Payment, Behpardakht Mellat, Parsian E-Commerce, Asan Pardakht and Iran Kish by one place each, along with OmidPay, also by one, and Pardakht Novin by two. Pasargad Electronic Payment held 41st. A one-place move is noise on its own. Seven of them in one direction is the shape of a national payments sector growing against a global field that mostly is not.

The share data underneath is where the signal is. TAP grew transaction count 26% against 2024 and took its share of Iran-attributed transactions from 14.1% to 17.1%. Inside a pool that is essentially fixed by the size of the domestic card network, three points of share is a transfer from named competitors, not new ground. Set that against our own record from the previous edition: Behpardakht Mellat accounted for 21.69% of the valueof Iran’s payment transactions in 1404 (2025-26), per Shaparak’s economic report, the largest single share by value. Nilson counts transactions; Shaparak counted value. The two together describe a market where the firm carrying the largest tickets and the firm growing transaction count fastest are not the same company: the competitive contest is being fought over transaction volume at the low end, while the value concentration sits elsewhere and has so far been stable.

What we hold back. The Nilson table is not open to this desk. We work from the Persian relay of it, and the absolute transaction count printed in that relay does not reconcile with the share percentages published in the same item. Ranks and shares are internally consistent and we publish them; the absolute count waits for the table. Underlying data owner: the Nilson Report, issue 1312.

What to watch:whether TAP’s share gain repeats in the next issue or proves to be a single-year step; whether the count leader and the value leader converge; and whether any Iranian processor’s growth traces to new merchant categories rather than reallocation inside the same national pool.