Syria’s first superapps bet on the country’s recovery as payment infrastructure lags behind

Syria is getting its first superapps, even as most people in the country still can’t get a bank card. My Syria and Labby announced funding rounds days apart in late July — one of them being the first investment into a Syrian tech startup — in the hope that the metaphorical plane will be built fast enough while they fly. The superapps — single mobile platforms that integrate multiple distinct services like payments, transport, booking, and e-commerce into one seamless ecosystem — received the funding to launch locally.

The two investments came to a market that’s still quite nascent, with Syria recording fewer than 10 funding deals so far in 2026, according to Magnitt’s coverage. “Syria currently has a number of deals that is comparable to the smaller markets in the region. We’re speaking of countries like Lebanon — those relatively smaller Levant countries that were there earlier, but with a smaller scale of activity,” Farah El Nahlawi, research manager at Magnitt tells EnterpriseAM.

For more startups to emerge and develop, Syria’s infrastructure development needs to keep pace. “We view infrastructure as the essential first step toward enabling a successful startup ecosystem in Syria,” Abdel Hameed Arwani, Partner at Shorooq tells EnterpriseAM. “Looking at Syria’s macroeconomic needs, the country requires financial sector modernization, telecom and IT upgrades, and real estate redevelopment.”

That makes My Syria and Labby early arrivals as the top of a stack whose lower layers are still being built.

What’s being built

Labby was founded in 2024 by Mohammad Fawaz and it was announced late July that it secured USD 10 mn from a group of undisclosed Saudi and UAE investors. Labby also operates as a super app bundling services like ride-hailing, food delivery, e-commerce, digital payments and other on-demand offerings in a single platform.

The investment was a seed round by label, but not by size. USD 10 mn “is closer in the range of a series A investment when compared to local and regional figures,” Nahlawi tells us. The backers are most likely angel or family investors who may or may not be named at a later point, she adds.

My Syria was launched by 121 Living, a UAE-based startup founded by Syrian entrepreneurs Rami Kaiem, Feras Kaiem, Waseem Qudmani, and Kinan Madi. Established in 2007, 121 Living works across hospitality and e-commerce with a focus on property management and short-term rentals. The launch is funded by private individual investment from the four co-founders.

The idea came out of a booking that wouldn’t go through. “The idea started with everything happening in Syria — a lot of visitors are coming now, and Syria is entering a new era with the removal of sanctions. On my first visit back, I was trying to book a hotel, and it was very complicated because of sanctions, lack of payments, and communication difficulties. Syria was really offline, except for two or three sectors,” Rami Kaiem, co-founder of My Syria and UAE-based 121 Living, tells EnterpriseAM.

Built as a digital gateway and marketplace, My Syria is focused on tourism for now, with six services covering visitor needs: Booking a hotel apartment, an airport taxi, a rental car, or a restaurant. It serves Damascus only, hosting around 45 restaurants, 20 hotels, two holiday-home buildings, and three car rental companies, according to Kaiem. The app, supported by the Tourism Ministry, has been downloaded 15k times since its 29 July, with services rolling out every 1-2 two weeks. The plan is to expand to other cities beyond Damascus — primarily Aleppo then Latakia, Tartus or Homs, and to include other services such as public or government services.

The timing of the launch comes with a real tourism recovery. Syria drew 3.52 mn visitors in 1H 2026, up 111% y-o-y, with Arab travelers doubling. Returning Syrian expats remain the single largest bloc at 2.13 mn, up 75%.

What moved investors off the sidelines

Investors have been watching Syria since last year. Some are now starting to make their move. “The indicators that moved us from exploration to commitment were the relief of sanctions, international engagement, and regional power diplomacy with the Syrian government. Sanctions were the fundamental factor that prompted our move,” Arwani tells us.

Economic sanctions on Syria were lifted last year, removing the major obstacle to foreign investor access to the economy. The US has also moved to delist Syria as a State Sponsor of Terrorism, a potentially positive signal for business, though Syria remains on the FATF gray list and is due for another review in October. Syria has also begun reintegrating into the international financial system, starting with regaining SWIFT access.

AND- Syria was officially removed from the US’ list of state sponsors of terrorism this week, removing a hurdle that has been described as one of the remaining structural obstacles to capital flows into the country’s reconstruction economy. The decision also revoked the Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) status of Hay’at Tahrir Al Sham’s, the anti-Assad Islamist militant group that the current Syrian President Ahmed Al Sharaa led for about a decade.

But don’t hold your breath just yet: The de-listing removes one “of the excuses” that prevented companies from dealing with Syria, but it still doesn’t address the most important blockers for investment flows: Banking connectivity and compliance, regulatory predictability, and infrastructure, we reported last month when the US announced the delisting plan. Syria was on the SST list long before 2011, and international players still wired money in and invested in the country. What broke under Bashar Al Assad in the post-2011 era was connectivity to the international banking system — and this is what the Syrian government is actively working on fixing now.

Still, the infrastructure isn’t there

What hasn’t come yet is the consumer payment layer the superapps are built on. Syrians still can’t issue Visa or Mastercard. “Most platforms — like Pyypl or similar super apps offering global payment methods — target Syrians coming from abroad who already have a Visa or Mastercard and do not want to hold cash in Syria or are used to a specific financial system,” Syrian web3 expert Mohamad Soud tells EnterpriseAM. Visa and Mastercard POS terminals turn up occasionally in five-star hotels and specific venues, but remain largely the preserve of visitors rather than local Syrians.

New and existing fintechs are dealing with this challenge by attempting to bridge the gaps traditional banks have left, and Arwani argues they are more than a stopgap. “Over time, these fintech platforms will develop into comprehensive solutions that complement and support the broader banking system. It’s a core component of building structural solutions for the current environment — everyone is placing building blocks to grow the overall system, not temporary fixes to be torn down later,” he tells us.

The regulatory piece moved last week. The Central Bank of Syria issued a decree establishing a framework for licensing payment service providers and operators. It introduces a regulatory sandbox to test financial products before public launch and lays the technical and legal groundwork for eventual integration with regional and international payment systems — the first formal answer to the problem Soud describes. It also arrived considerably faster than most of the experts we spoke with expected.

More is needed. “Regulatory updates are crucial,” Arwani says, “The convening of the new parliament should pave the way for refining existing regulations and issuing new frameworks to support the ecosystem.”

Where the money is actually going

Shorooq’s own capital isn’t headed for consumer apps. After more than a year of assessment, it’s focusing on telecom / IT, financial infrastructure, and real estate — three sectors that map directly onto the macro gaps Arwani lays out. Specific deals are expected to be announced soon, he tells us.

Who’s writing cheques in the meantime is a narrow group. “Broadly speaking, it’s diaspora money — high-net-worth individuals and investors — plus Gulf institutions and family offices,” Arwanis tells us. For a smaller ecosystem like Syria, big investors and institutional VCs will take longer to enter the market as they require multiple rounds of due diligence before they commit, Nahlawi says.

The talent question

The third input is people, and that’s being organized largely from outside the country. SYNC, a nonprofit founded after the regime change by Syrians in the diaspora, connects tech professionals in Silicon Valley with their peers in Syria and aims to facilitate 25k jobs over five years through networking events, training, and mentorship programs for women entrepreneurs. Its first event, held in February in Damascus, drew more than 1,200 participants, well above expectations. The next iteration, scheduled for 9-10 October with over 3k people from 25 countries expected to attend, will bring together investors, founders, corporates, students, academics, and government.

“We have such an intelligent young workforce. They don't need a handout; they need a hand up. They just need an opportunity, and I think SYNC represented that opportunity. They were finally open to the rest of the world,” co-founder Muyesser Taqqi-Eddin tells us.

What could still go wrong

The case against moving now is mostly a list of things that haven’t happened yet. Syria remains on the FATF gray list with a review due in October. An unfavorable outcome would complicate exactly the correspondent banking and payment integrations the central bank decree is designed to enable. The card issuance problem the superapps were built to route around is unsolved, which leaves consumer platforms dependent on infrastructure nobody has finished building. And Labby's backers are undisclosed, limiting what can be said about how durable that capital is or whether it follows on.

Arwani’s own timeline is the clearest caution in the story: Institutional VC is 1-2 years out. On that read, July's two deals are not the start of a funding wave so much as the earliest movers arriving ahead of one.