Sharaa taps Visa as Syria reconnects to global finance: What to know

Paying for coffee with a card is a mundane process in most countries. But not in Syria, which has been cut off from international financial systems for decades.

What happened: Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa used a Visa card to pay for a coffee in Damascus on Wednesday in a demonstration of the restored technology. A video from Syria's Foreign Ministry shows Sharaa tapping the card against a payment terminal at a restaurant in Old Damascus where he had been served coffee with Central Bank Governor Safwat Raslan. 

Visa said in a statement that it worked with the Central Bank of Syria, Lebanon’s Fransabank and Syrian payment technology company Paymera to process the transaction. Fransabank served as the acquiring financial institution, while Paymera provided the local payment infrastructure.

“Today’s test paves the way for international card acceptance in Syria and represents a practical milestone in expanding payment options and facilitating transactions for international visitors,” Raslan said in the statement.

Meanwhile, Mastercard and Qatar's QNB Group said in a statement on Wednesday that they had completed what they described as the first end-to-end international card payment in ​Syria.

QNB said its system now allows participating Syrian hotels, restaurants and government entities to accept international Mastercard credit cards at its point-of-sale terminals. 

Visa’s rollout in Syria began in December, when the company signed an agreement with the central bank to launch operations and develop a digital payment ecosystem. Visa held workshops with Syrian financial institutions in February, before the central bank formally authorized licensed banks and payment companies to work with international networks including Visa and Mastercard in May.

Why it matters: The transactions mark a significant step in Syria’s efforts to reconnect with global financial systems after decades of sanctions and more than a decade of civil war left international banking and card services largely unavailable.

The US government removed Syria from its list of state sponsors of terrorism on Monday, eliminating one of the final major legal barriers discouraging international banks and investors from dealing with the country. Syria had been on the list since 1979.

Washington and other Western governments imposed further sanctions on Syria in 2011, after the outbreak of the civil war. The conflict, which began with a brutal state crackdown on protests, lasted until 2024 and shrank the country’s GDP by between 50% and 70%, according to various estimates. 

The civil war largely ended after former President Bashar al-Assad was overthrown in December 2024 and replaced by Sharaa, the former head of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist militant group in northwest Syria that led the rebel offensive.

Since being appointed president in January 2025, Sharaa’s government has sought to have international sanctions lifted and reintegrate Syria into the global financial system by liberalizing the economy and attracting foreign investment.

Know more: Mastercard and Visa operated in Syria before the country's civil war in 2011, but they were far from a mainstream payment option because Syria was designated a state sponsor of terrorism. Therefore, banks couldn't widely issue the cards, and their acceptance was almost exclusively confined to luxury high-end hotels, international airlines and major tourist destinations catering to foreign visitors.