Byblos HorizonE-Commerce & Shopify
Payment Gateways in Lebanon: What Actually Works With Shopify
Mohamad Haidar
Founder of Byblos Horizon
Published October 22, 2026 · 12 min read
Shopify Payments is not available to Lebanese-registered businesses. If you have built the store and are now trying to switch on checkout, that is the wall you have hit, and it has nothing to do with anything you did wrong.
This is what works instead, what each option costs, and the part almost nobody models: what cash on delivery actually takes out of your margin once refusals are counted.
The short answer
A Lebanese store normally runs two things side by side. One local method that most buyers already trust, usually cash on delivery or a wallet, and one card gateway for the people who will pay now. Choosing only one costs you orders at one end or margin at the other.
What is actually available
Figures below are indicative starting points, not quotes. Fees move with volume and providers change terms, so treat this as the list of conversations to have rather than a price list.
| Option | Indicative fee | Settlement | Shopify fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Whish Pay | 1% to 2% | Same day or next day | Launched on Shopify June 2025, cardless wallet checkout |
| MontyPay | Quoted per merchant | Per agreement | Lebanese, BDL authorised, documents a Shopify integration |
| Tap Payments | ~2.9% international cards, 1.5% to 2% local | 2 to 4 business days | Direct Shopify integration |
| Areeba | 2% to 3%, negotiable on volume | Varies by bank | Bank-dependent, longer onboarding and more paperwork |
| Bank of Beirut Paygate | Not published, quoted on application | Not published | Full card gateway, but no documented Shopify integration |
| OMT online | Flat fee per transaction | When the customer completes the transfer | Manual step, customer leaves checkout |
| Cash on delivery | Courier fee plus refusals | On delivery | Native to Shopify, and the real default here |
| Shopify Payments | Not available | Not available | Not offered to Lebanese businesses |
| Stripe | Not available | Not available | Does not officially support Lebanese entities |
On MontyPay specifically, because it is the option most often left out of guides like this one. It is run by Monty Finance SAL, registered in Lebanon and authorised by Banque du Liban as a financial institution and payment service provider, and it documents a Shopify integration alongside WooCommerce, Magento, PrestaShop and Ecomz. It is pitched regionally rather than purely locally, with offices in Lebanon, the UK, Jordan, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, which makes it worth a conversation if you are selling across more than one of those markets. Pricing is quoted per merchant rather than published, so you will not find a rate card to compare.
Bank of Beirut runs a full card gateway, branded Paygate or eWay. On paper it is capable: all major card brands, 3D Secure, fraud screening, card tokenisation, recurring billing for subscriptions, a reporting portal, and a choice between taking payment on your own site or on a redirected page. For a business already banking there, that is a serious option and the relationship is often easier than onboarding a new provider cold.
The caveat matters if you are on Shopify specifically. Bank of Beirut does not name Shopify, or any other platform integration, anywhere in its published material, and it does not publish pricing. So before you commit, ask them two questions directly: does Paygate support a Shopify checkout, and is it a native integration or a redirect. A redirect sends the buyer off your checkout to pay and then back, and that handoff costs conversion in a market where trust is already the hard part. The same two questions apply to the other bank-linked and older local gateways, NetCommerce, PinPay, CMO and the facilities offered through BLOM and Bankmed, which we have not verified for current Shopify support and so are not quoting terms for.
The decision is about who you sell to, not which gateway is best
Selling mostly inside Lebanon. Cash on delivery plus a wallet. Whish Pay is the lowest-friction card-free option and settles fast. Add a card gateway when prepaid volume justifies the monthly minimums, not before.
Selling to the diaspora. You need real card acceptance, because a buyer in Paris or Dubai is not paying cash to a courier in Beirut. This is where a card gateway earns its fee, and where a store running cash on delivery only quietly loses its best-margin orders.
Selling into the Gulf as well. A regional gateway that covers both sides is worth more than the cheapest Lebanese rate, because running two separate reconciliations across two markets costs more in hours than it saves in basis points.
Considering a foreign entity for Stripe. It is a legitimate route and plenty of Lebanese founders take it. It is also a tax, accounting and banking commitment in another country, and it should be decided with an accountant rather than during a checkout configuration. We are not qualified to advise on the structure and neither is your developer.
What cash on delivery actually costs
This is the part that decides whether a Lebanese store is profitable, and it is almost never in the model. The figures below are our own, published with their ranges and method on the calculator methodology page, drawn from Lebanese store operations rather than from a vendor's marketing.
| What we measure | Our figure | Range we see |
|---|---|---|
| Share of orders paid cash on delivery | 60% | 35% to 75% |
| Of those, refused at the door | 15% | 15% to 25% |
| Return fee per refused order | $2.50 | $2.50 to $3.50 |
Put 100 orders through that. Sixty are cash on delivery. Around nine of them are refused and come back. You have already paid to acquire all 100, so the acquisition cost on those nine is gone, and you pay a return fee on each on top.
At a $12 customer acquisition cost, that is roughly $108 of wasted acquisition plus about $22 in return fees, so near $130 lost per 100 orders before a single other cost. If your contribution per delivered order is $8, those nine refusals have eaten the contribution from sixteen good orders.
That is why refusal rate, not gateway fee, is the number that decides a Lebanese store's margin. The gap between a 2% and a 3% gateway fee is real but small. The gap between a 15% and a 25% refusal rate is the whole business. Model your own with the Lebanon e-commerce cost calculator.
What this means in practice
Make prepaid the easier choice rather than the only one. A discount on prepaid orders worth roughly what a refusal costs you is usually profitable, because you are paying to remove a risk rather than buying a sale you already had.
Confirm the order before it ships. A WhatsApp confirmation step on cash on delivery orders is the single cheapest intervention we deploy, and it removes a meaningful share of refusals before a courier is paid. We cover the mechanics in WhatsApp automation.
Do not let the gateway choice block the launch. Most Lebanese stores can open on cash on delivery plus a wallet, and add card acceptance once there is volume to negotiate with. Waiting for the perfect payment stack has cost more Lebanese launches than any fee ever has.
Questions people are asking
Can I use Shopify Payments in Lebanon?
No. Shopify Payments is not offered to Lebanese-registered businesses, so a Lebanon-based store has to connect a third-party provider instead. This is the single most common surprise for founders who have already built the store before thinking about checkout.
Does Stripe work for a Lebanese company?
Not for a Lebanese-registered entity. Stripe does not officially support Lebanon. Some founders register a company abroad to reach Stripe, which is a real option but brings accounting, tax and banking obligations in that country, and it is a decision to take with an accountant rather than a developer.
What is the simplest gateway to start with in Lebanon?
Whish Pay is usually the lowest-friction start. It launched on Shopify in June 2025 as a cardless wallet checkout, it settles quickly, and it reaches a large existing Lebanese user base. The trade-off is that it only serves customers who have the wallet, so it works best alongside a card option rather than instead of one.
What does cash on delivery actually cost?
More than the courier fee. Using our own published Lebanese operating figures, around 60% of orders are COD and roughly 15% of those are refused at the door. On 100 orders that is about nine that never deliver, after you have already paid to acquire every one of them, plus a return fee on each. The acquisition cost on the refused orders is usually the larger loss and it rarely appears in anyone's spreadsheet.
Should I take card payments or just do cash on delivery?
Both, in most cases. COD is still how a majority of Lebanese buyers expect to pay and removing it costs you orders. But every prepaid order is one that cannot be refused at the door, so the goal is to make prepaid the easier choice rather than the only one. Discounting prepaid by roughly what a refusal costs you is usually profitable.
Do these fees and availability change?
Frequently. Lebanese payment infrastructure moves faster than most published guides, including this one. Treat every figure here as a starting point for a conversation with the provider, confirm current terms before you sign, and check the date at the top of this page.
Sources and further reading
- Whish Money launches cardless Shopify checkout, June 2025, for the Shopify integration and settlement claims.
- MontyPay developer documentation, listing Shopify among its twelve documented platform integrations, and MontyPay company information, for the Banque du Liban authorisation and the markets served.
- Bank of Beirut Paygate, for the gateway's stated capabilities and the absence of any named platform integration.
- Payment gateways for Lebanese e-commerce, 2026, for the indicative fee ranges, which that source also labels as indicative.
- Shopify community thread on Lebanon payment gateways, where merchants describe the entity and availability constraints first hand.
- Our calculator methodology, for the COD share, refusal rate and return fee figures, with their ranges and how they were derived.
Fees, availability and settlement terms in Lebanon change often. Everything here was checked in October 2026 and should be confirmed with the provider before you commit. Nothing here is tax, legal or accounting advice, and the question of registering an entity abroad in particular is one for a qualified accountant.