The standard narrative about e-commerce in Syria focuses on what is missing: Stripe does not work there, PayPal is limited, Shopify is not used. All true. What gets less attention is what is actually happening instead.
Syrian merchants are selling online in significant numbers. They are just doing it through channels that leave no trace in the standard tooling or statistics that international observers use to measure e-commerce adoption.
For a full breakdown of the available payment methods and shipping companies, see E-commerce in Syria: the practical guide.
The standard workflow
A typical Syrian merchant who sells online runs their business roughly like this:
They post product photos on Instagram or Facebook. Interested buyers send a direct message asking about price, availability, or size. The merchant replies, they agree on details, the buyer gives a phone number and delivery address, and the merchant arranges shipping or drops off the order themselves. Payment happens on delivery.
This works. For a merchant with thirty to fifty orders a month, it is manageable. The business runs entirely out of messaging apps, with no formal system for tracking what was sold, who paid, or what is left in stock.
Why it breaks down at scale
The same workflow that works at fifty orders gets messy at two hundred. A few things happen:
Conversations start getting buried. A buyer who messaged three days ago and has not heard back goes to a competitor. Prices get quoted differently in different conversations. Orders get shipped to the wrong address because the information was in a chat that scrolled off the screen.
The merchant ends up spending the majority of their time on logistics that a basic system would handle automatically: answering the same questions about price and availability, copying addresses into notes, chasing payment confirmations.
None of this is a personal failure. It is the natural limit of a sales process built on top of a messaging app. The app was designed for conversation, not commerce.
What a store changes, specifically
When a merchant adds an online store, the Instagram page does not go away. It keeps doing what it does well, which is discovery: reaching new buyers, showing new products, building a following.
What changes is what happens after someone sees a product they want. Instead of sliding into DMs, they tap the link in the bio, land on a product page with a real price and description, and place an order. The merchant gets a notification with the buyer's name, address, phone number, and exactly what they ordered.
No conversation needed for the transaction. WhatsApp comes back in as confirmation: the merchant sends a quick message saying the order is on its way. That is what buyers actually want from WhatsApp anyway, a confirmation, not a negotiation.
The shift: social media stays the marketing channel. The store handles the transaction. WhatsApp handles the confirmation. Each tool does one job.
Payment: cash on delivery dominates
Cash on delivery is the default in Syria for a simple reason. Buyers do not trust online payment for orders from merchants they have not dealt with before. Paying when the package arrives removes the risk entirely from the buyer's side.
Most Syrian online stores offer cash on delivery as a standard option, and many use it for the majority of their orders. Electronic payment methods like Paymera (card payments via local bank accounts) and Sham Cash (an e-wallet) are available and used, particularly by repeat buyers and for larger orders. Bank transfer is also common for higher-value transactions.
See the full e-commerce in Syria guide for a breakdown of each payment method and how they work in practice.
Shipping: four main options
Domestic shipping in Syria runs through several courier companies. Most merchants use more than one, choosing by destination and order type.
Al-Qadmous (القدموس) is probably the most mentioned shipping company among Syrian merchants dealing in inter-city and inter-province orders. They operate a model called «الشحن ضد الدفع», or cash against delivery: the courier picks up the package, delivers it across provinces, collects cash from the buyer on arrival, and remits the payment to the merchant. It covers B2B shipments between merchants and B2C shipments from merchants to consumers. Standard inter-city delivery is 24 hours to major centres and 48 hours to rural areas. Their website is alkadmous.com.
Wadily and Yalla Go are two other options that operate in Damascus only, providing door-to-door delivery. These are common starting points for merchants operating entirely within the capital whose buyers prefer cash on delivery. Aramex has a longer history in the region, covers multiple provinces, and is trusted for more valuable or sensitive shipments. Some still handle delivery themselves within their own city to keep costs down and stay in direct contact with buyers. The choice is theirs.
Makook's dashboard connects to Wadily, Aramex, and Yalla Go. For Al-Qadmous, merchants arrange shipment through Al-Qadmous directly and manage orders within their Makook dashboard.
The free store question
One reason Syrian merchants have been slow to move to structured stores is the assumption that a proper store costs money. This was mostly true until recently. Platforms that operated in Syria were either paid from the start or had such short free tiers that they served as trials rather than real working tools.
Makook's Free plan is different. The Free plan is free forever. It is not a trial and not a limited-time offer. A merchant who creates a store today on the Free plan pays nothing, takes no transaction cut, and loses nothing if they decide the store is not for them. The only cost of trying it is the time it takes to set up, which is measured in minutes.
You can see what a finished store looks like before committing to anything. The pricing page has a full breakdown of what each plan includes.
Where things are going
The shift from informal to structured selling is happening, but slowly. The merchants who move first tend to be the ones who hit the volume ceiling on Instagram DMs, got tired of the chaos, and looked for a better way. Many of them find that the store does not cannibalize their social media presence at all. The followers stay. The orders get cleaner.
The merchants who have not moved yet are mostly waiting for a reason to bother. The usual reasons: cost (resolved by a free plan), complexity (resolved by a non-technical setup), and trust (built by seeing other merchants use it successfully).
The full store features page has a breakdown of what a Makook store includes for merchants at every stage.
