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

Visa and Mastercard announced Wednesday that their networks can now be used to make international card payments in Syria.

Jack Dutton

Aug 27, 2026

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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........

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