Online Store in Syria 2026: Payments and Delivery That Actually Work

An online store in Syria in 2026 gets paid in three practical ways: cash on delivery, bank or e-wallet transfers your team confirms by hand, and payment at pickup from your shop. As of October 2026, Stripe and PayPal do not serve Syria, and none of the 21 online payment providers built into Odoo 20 lists the Syrian pound among its currencies.

Cards are moving, but not online yet. In May 2026 the Central Bank of Syria let licensed banks and e-payment companies work with Visa and Mastercard, and in August 2026 Decision 1124 set up a licensing framework for payment service providers and e-money issuers, without opening international links straight away. As of October 2026 we found no card gateway that a Syrian store can connect to Odoo.

Use this decision list:

• Cash on delivery: offer it in every governorate your drivers or courier reach; the buyer needs no account.
• Bank or e-wallet transfer: add it for high-value orders and repeat buyers. Use an account that accepts business payments, and ask the wallet provider in writing about its Central Bank licence.
• Pay on site: add it if you have a shop; Odoo turns it on with Click & Collect.
• Pay on invoice: only for business customers you know.
• Cards: wait until your bank offers online acceptance with an API and a merchant contract, then price the integration separately.

In Odoo 20, cash on delivery is a checkbox on a fixed-price or rule-based delivery method. For transfers, duplicate the Wire Transfer method for each bank or wallet and add the account details, plus an image of the wallet's own QR code if you like; Odoo cannot generate a Syrian payment QR. Transfer orders wait at Quotation Sent, with no stock reserved, until your team confirms the money. See Odoo's guide to bank payments and wire transfer.

Show buyers in Syria their prices in new Syrian pounds, and keep costs and margins in US dollars behind the scenes. Odoo 20 does both, with one pricelist per currency.

Three facts shape the choice as of October 2026:

• One new pound equals 100 old pounds and has circulated since 1 January 2026. Old notes stopped being legal tender on 31 July 2026; for five years only the Central Bank in Damascus exchanges them.
• Legislative Decree 5 of 2024, still listed as in force on the Central Bank's website, bans using any currency but the Syrian pound for payments or trade, and offering goods and services in another currency without Cabinet approval. It exempts non-resident foreigners and foreign investors, and does not penalize foreign trade. Ask your lawyer before showing or accepting dollars in Syria.
• Odoo has a single Syrian currency, SYP, which you use for the new pound; it ships inactive with the symbol £.

Setup: if USD is your company currency, activate SYP, change its symbol to ل.س and enter the rate. Then create an SYP pricelist with one rule: 0% Discount on the sales price, Round off to 100. If your lawyer approves dollar prices for buyers abroad, assign the USD pricelist to your website and a country group of those countries instead of making it Selectable, so visitors in Syria see pounds; Odoo's eCommerce pricing guide explains country groups.

Worked example, with an illustrative rate: a power bank sells for US$40. If the rate you enter is 122.00 new pounds per dollar, Odoo computes 4,880 and, rounding to the nearest 100, shows 4,900 ل.س. For real prices, use the Central Bank's current bulletin rate. Pound prices follow each new rate you enter, unless you fix a product's SYP price. Agree who updates the rate and how often, and record pound payments as our guide to multi-currency accounting in Syria explains.

Price delivery by governorate, not by feel: group Syria's 14 governorates into zones and give each zone its own delivery method. Odoo 20 ships with no Syrian governorates, so first add them to the Syria country record: Damascus, Rif Dimashq, Aleppo, Homs, Hama, Latakia, Tartus, Idlib, Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor, Al-Hasakah, Daraa, As-Suwayda and Quneitra.

A Damascus store might start with three zones:

• Zone 1: Damascus and Rif Dimashq, own drivers, cash on delivery.
• Zone 2: governorates your courier serves on a regular schedule, cash on delivery.
• Zone 3: everywhere else, prepaid by transfer, or left off until a courier covers it.

For each zone, create a Fixed Price or Based on Rules delivery method. In its Availability tab, choose Syria and the zone's governorates; you can also cap weight or volume, and use Excluded Tags to keep bulky or fragile products out. Rule-based methods price by weight, volume, quantity or order value. Tick Cash on Delivery, set the estimated working days, and add your courier's tracking link if it has one.

One detail catches people out: free delivery above an order amount is offered on Fixed Price methods but not on rule-based ones, and Odoo compares it in the company currency, so write the threshold in dollars if USD is that currency. On rule-based methods, build free delivery into the rules.

With a shop, turn on Click & Collect: buyers pick a branch that has the item in stock and pay on site. Stock is reserved once a cash-on-delivery or pickup order is confirmed, and leaves your on-hand quantity when you validate the delivery. Our guide to point of sale for Syrian retailers covers the counter side.

Confirm every cash-on-delivery order by message before you pack it, so a wrong address or a changed mind surfaces before the driver leaves. In Syria, send it by hand from the store's WhatsApp number, or by SMS from Odoo.

Why by hand: Odoo's WhatsApp app is Enterprise-only and needs a WhatsApp Business Platform account, and Meta's developer documentation, as of October 2026, says businesses in Syria cannot use that platform and users there cannot receive its messages. Odoo's paid SMS service does list a per-message price for Syrian (+963) numbers, and an automation rule can text buyers when an order is confirmed.

Copy, paste and fill in the brackets:

• New cash-on-delivery order: Hello [name], this is [store]. We received your order [S00123]: [items], total [amount] ل.س including delivery to [area]. Reply 1 to confirm or 2 to change it, and please have the amount ready in cash.
• Transfer order: Hello [name], your order [S00123] comes to [amount] ل.س. Please transfer it to [account or wallet name and number] with the reference [S00123] and send a photo of the receipt here. We ship once the payment is confirmed.
• Out for delivery: Your order [S00123] is with [driver] today between [time] and [time]. Amount due: [amount] ل.س. Won't be home? Reply with a better time.

Four habits that reduce refusals:

• Show the full price, delivery fee and expected date before checkout; Odoo shows both for each delivery method.
• Ship only after a reply, and phone buyers who stay silent.
• Add a tag for expensive products to Excluded Tags on your cash-on-delivery methods, with a prepaid method for them in each zone.
• Tag contacts who refused a parcel, and ask them to pay by transfer next time.

A refused order is already confirmed in Odoo: cancel it before it ships, or record a return on the delivery so the stock comes back.

Tick these 20 points before you announce the store. Most take minutes in Odoo 20; the legal and money points need your lawyer, accountant or bank.

• Register the business; see our guide to starting a business in Syria in 2026.
• Ask your accountant whether the tax authority's electronic link covers your sector.
• Choose a domain and hosting, with admin logins in the company's name.
• Install Website, eCommerce and Inventory in Arabic and English.
• Pick the company currency before the first accounting entry; Odoo blocks later changes.
• Activate SYP, set its symbol to ل.س and enter today's rate.
• Build the SYP pricelist with rounding, plus a USD one for buyers abroad if your lawyer agrees.
• Add the 14 governorates to Syria.
• Create one delivery method per zone, with cash on delivery where you collect cash.
• Set estimated delivery days and a tracking link per method.
• Publish Wire Transfer, duplicated per bank or wallet.
• Turn on Click & Collect if you have a shop.
• Keep the delivery reservation method at At Confirmation, Odoo's default.
• Give products Arabic names and add common spellings as tags: typo correction only fixes single words of 4 or more letters with no exact match.
• Write a returns policy and enable portal returns.
• Tag high-value products to keep them off cash on delivery.
• Save the three WhatsApp messages on the store phone.
• Turn on abandoned cart emails.
• Place a test order per payment method and zone from a phone.
• Launch on the mobile web first; read our guide to the App Store and Google Play from Syria before planning an app.

Next step: list your products, zones and payment methods on one page, then ask METCH to build your Odoo 20 online store. METCH is an official Odoo partner serving Syria; for sales, stock and accounting in Odoo too, start with our Odoo questionnaire.