Online commerce in Syria is growing, and it looks nothing like the Shopify-and-Stripe picture you might picture elsewhere. The infrastructure is different, the selling habits are different, and the tools that work are different. This guide is a factual overview for anyone trying to understand the space, whether you are a merchant, a researcher, or just curious about how it works.
The second article in this series, How Syrian merchants sell online in 2026, goes deeper into merchant behavior and the shift happening right now from informal to structured selling.
How most selling happens today
Ask any Syrian merchant how they sell online and most will describe the same workflow: post photos on Instagram or Facebook, get inquiries via DM or WhatsApp, agree a price, collect a phone number, and arrange delivery manually.
This is not a workaround or a sign of a struggling market. It is the dominant method, and it works well enough for small volumes. The friction shows up later, when orders scale: conversations get lost, prices have to be quoted again and again, and there is no record of what was sold or to whom.
A structured online store does not replace social media. It sits beside it. The merchant keeps the Instagram page for discovery and marketing; the store link in the bio takes customers somewhere they can browse products, see prices, and place an order without a back-and-forth conversation.
Payment methods available in Syria
International card networks like Visa and Mastercard do not work for most domestic Syrian merchants the way they do elsewhere. The gap is filled by local alternatives that have grown specifically around this market.
Paymera
Paymera is a local payment gateway integrated with Syrian bank accounts. It lets store owners accept card payments from their customers, with settlement to a Syrian bank account. On Makook stores, Paymera connects directly through the dashboard.
Sham Cash
Sham Cash is an e-wallet widely used in Syria. Customers can pay from their Sham Cash balance, and merchants receive funds to their wallet. It covers a portion of the population that is comfortable with mobile payments but may not have a bank card set up for online use.
Bank transfer
Direct bank transfer is still common, particularly for larger orders. The customer sends a transfer, shares a screenshot, and the merchant confirms before dispatching. Slow, but familiar and trusted.
Cash on delivery
Cash on delivery is by far the most used payment method in Syria. The customer pays when the package arrives. This removes any trust barrier for the buyer and is the default option on most Syrian online stores. Any well-configured store on any Makook plan, including the free one, supports cash on delivery out of the box.
Payment summary: Syrian merchants can receive payment by card via Paymera, by e-wallet via Sham Cash, by bank transfer, or cash on delivery. Most stores support all four.
Shipping summary: the main Syria-local couriers are Al-Qadmous (cash against delivery, branch-to-branch, covers all provinces), Aramex (all provinces), and Wadily and Yalla Go (Damascus only, door-to-door delivery).
Shipping and delivery companies
Domestic shipping in Syria operates through a mix of local and regional courier companies. Coverage, speed, and pricing vary by company and by governorate, so merchants often use more than one depending on the destination and order type.
Al-Qadmous (القدموس)
Al-Qadmous is one of the most widely used inter-city and inter-province shipping companies for Syrian merchants. They specialise in goods shipping between cities and governorates, covering both B2B (merchant to merchant) and B2C (merchant to consumer) shipments. Their website is alkadmous.com.
Their main shipping model is called «الشحن ضد الدفع» (cash against delivery). In this model, the courier collects payment from the recipient when the package is delivered and remits it to the merchant. For the buyer it works like cash on delivery. For the merchant, it means they do not need to handle payment separately: the courier handles collection and transfer. Standard delivery is 24 hours to major city centres and 48 hours to rural areas.
Wadily
Wadily is a Syrian logistics company that operates exclusively in Damascus. They provide door-to-door delivery, picking up from the merchant and delivering directly to the customer's door. Many smaller merchants start with Wadily partly because it operates on a cash-on-delivery basis, which fits how most Syrian buyers prefer to pay.
Aramex
Aramex operates across Syria's major cities and provinces. It has a longer track record in the region and is trusted for reliability, which matters for higher-value shipments or merchants serving multiple governorates.
Yalla Go
Yalla Go is another local delivery option that, like Wadily, operates in Damascus only and offers door-to-door delivery. Merchants on Makook can connect to Wadily, Aramex, and Yalla Go directly from the store dashboard, or use their own couriers or Al-Qadmous if they prefer.
The Free plan: what it actually means
Makook offers a Free plan that is permanently free. The Free plan is free forever. It is not a trial and not a limited-time offer.
This matters in context: most Syrian merchants are weighing the cost of a store against selling for free through Instagram DMs. When the cost of a structured store is zero and the store has unlimited products, there is no trade-off to make. The cost of not having a store is measured in wasted time, not in subscription fees.
The Free plan includes a full online store with a shareable link, unlimited products, order management, cash on delivery, and basic reporting. No commissions are taken on sales at any plan level. Whatever you earn is yours.
What a store adds that social media does not
Social media is good at discovery. A post can reach thousands of people who did not know the merchant existed. What it cannot do is take an order cleanly. Every interested buyer becomes a conversation, and every conversation is a chance for the order to fall through.
A store with a product catalog, prices, and a checkout process removes that friction. The customer decides on their own time, places the order, and the merchant gets a notification with everything they need: product, size, address, phone number. The conversation that follows, if there is one, is just confirmation.
The shift is not from social to store. It is from social plus chaos to social plus structure.
What this market looks like to international observers
Syria is not on Shopify. Stripe does not operate there. Most of the standard international e-commerce toolkit simply does not apply. This creates a gap in English-language coverage of the space, which is why articles like this one tend to be sparse in search results.
The gap is not because Syrian merchants are not selling online. They are, in large numbers, mostly through informal channels. The documentation just does not exist in English at any depth.
For a practical breakdown of merchant behavior and the current transition happening in Syria's online commerce, read How Syrian merchants sell online in 2026.
