Sending money to Syria: hawala, transfers and cards

This page is about getting money into the country. How much cash to carry in is on the money and cash page, and changing it is on the changing money page. The question here is a different one: how someone abroad sends money to someone in Syria, and what a visitor does if the cash runs out.

How hawala works

Hawala is the country’s money artery. The mechanism is plain: the sender hands the amount and a commission to a broker in their own city, the broker calls a partner in Syria, and the recipient usually collects cash the same day. No bank sits in between. The whole record fits in a notebook and two phones.

Brokers do not trade under a sign of their own either. A grocer, a goldsmith, a travel agency, an exchange office — the shop does something else for a living and hawala is the side business. The capital is reputation: who owes what to whom is neighbourhood knowledge. The commission usually runs around 5 percent and moves with the amount, the corridor and the urgency.

The weakness of the system is the same thing as its speed: nothing is written down for you. If a dispute arises there is no office to take it to; what works is trust. That is why a broker is found through someone you know rather than off the street. Licensed domestic transfer companies with branches exist as well, Al-Haram among the better known. The list of licensed companies and offices is published by the central bank (cb.gov.sy).

Money coming through the global networks

Networks such as Western Union and MoneyGram do carry remittances into Syria. One rule shapes the whole thing, and it lands straight in the pocket: a remittance arriving through those networks is paid to the recipient in Syrian pounds, not in dollars. It rests on Cabinet decision number 189 of 18 March 2025 and a central bank letter of 16 April 2026.

In practice that means you send dollars, the recipient takes pounds, and the conversion does not happen at a rate you chose. The recipient absorbs the gap. On the MoneyGram side the ceiling per transaction sits at around 2000 dollars; confirm the exact limit, the fee and the payout point with the company before you send.

Then there is the corridor question. Sending is not open from every country, and sending to Syria from North America is not always possible. Check the corridor between your country and Syria on the company’s own site. Do not walk up to a counter on hearsay; if the corridor is closed, that is where you find out.

Why a bank transfer is still weak

Syrian banks sat outside SWIFT, the international payments network, for the length of the war. The connection was rebuilt after December 2024 and the first international SWIFT transfer went through in 2025. The sanctions side moved too: the United States lifted its comprehensive sanctions on 1 July 2025 and the European Union ended its own sanctions regime.

A technical connection and a working channel are not the same thing. The correspondent banking network is still thin, and a sending bank accepting a transfer to Syria is the exception rather than the rule. Timing and fees are unpredictable and a payment can stall on the way. It is worth trying, but nothing should be built on it — least of all a payment with a date attached.

What changed on the card side

On 4 May 2026 the central bank allowed licensed banks and electronic payment companies to work with Visa and Mastercard. Mastercard completed the technical integration on 8 May 2026, the first end-to-end international card payment ran through a bank, and on 27 August 2026 a demonstration Visa payment was taken in Damascus. The stated target is 50000 devices by the end of 2026.

What that means today needs reading carefully. These are pilots and demonstrations, not a payment network in general use. For a visitor nothing has changed yet: ATMs do not pay out on a foreign card, very few places take cards, and cash is the way. Ask the place you are staying directly before you travel. Cards work is not yet a true sentence about the country as a whole.

What it adds up to for a visitor

All of it comes down to one line: bring the money with you. Work out the number of days, the daily spend and a margin in advance; the budget guide exists for that. Drawing more money halfway through a trip is not an option, and the options that do exist are slow and costly.

Timing counts as well. Transfer offices and bank branches keep office hours, and the week has a different shape here: the weekend falls on Friday and Saturday, and official working days run from Sunday to Thursday. A transfer sent on a Thursday afternoon may not be collectable before Sunday morning. If a payment has a date on it, put that in the calendar.

For a reader in the diaspora the question takes another shape: which channel is cheapest for sending money to family. The answer depends on the corridor, and commission is not the only measure. The currency the recipient is paid in, the rate used for the conversion and the distance they walk to a branch all count. The same amount sent through two channels can reach the recipient visibly smaller through one of them.

If you run out while you are there

The road is not closed even so. Someone abroad can send you money through a global network and you collect it in pounds at a payout point with your passport. You lose on the rate, but the money reaches your hand. Treat that as an exit door, not a plan.

Two things make that moment easier. Keep your passport with you, and make sure whoever sends knows your name exactly as it is spelled in that passport — a single letter out of place stops the payout. Second, find out in advance where the payout point is; a hotel desk or your guide knows the nearest licensed branch.