First Card Payment in Damascus
On 27 August 2026, Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa used a Visa card to pay for coffee at a restaurant in the Old City of Damascus, completing what officials described as the country's first live international card transaction. Central Bank of Syria Governor Mohammed Safwat Raslan sat beside him during the demonstration.
The payment cleared through Lebanon's Fransabank as the acquiring institution, with the Syrian payment-technology firm Paymera handling processing.
Two Networks, One Day
The two largest global card networks moved almost simultaneously. On the same day, a partnership between Mastercard and Qatar's QNB Group completed what it called the first end-to-end international card payment in Syria in more than 15 years.
The near-simultaneous transactions mark one of the clearest operational signs yet that Syrian banks can again connect to the international payment rails that sanctions had cut off.
Years of Restrictions Lifted
The launch followed a rapid sequence of policy steps. A Visa agreement with the Central Bank of Syria was signed in December 2025, and on 4 May 2026 the central bank authorized licensed Syrian banks and electronic-payment companies to work directly with global networks such as Visa and Mastercard.
The card transactions came days after the United States removed Syria from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, a designation that had stood since 1979. The US repealed the Caesar Act sanctions in December 2025, and the European Union lifted its measures in May 2026.
Reconnecting to Global Finance
The move builds on Syria's first SWIFT electronic transfer in June 2024, which ended a 14-year exclusion from the main international messaging system for bank transfers. Card acceptance extends that reconnection to everyday retail payments and to foreign visitors carrying international cards.
A practical milestone in expanding payment options and facilitating transactions for international visitors.
What It Signals
For a wartime economy whose output contracted sharply between 2011 and 2024, functioning card networks lower the friction on trade, tourism, and remittances that had long depended on cash and informal channels. The Syrian pound (SYP) held broadly steady against the US dollar (USD) through the week of the announcement.
Officials framed the tests as a starting point rather than a full rollout, with wider issuance and acceptance still to be built out across licensed banks.