How to sell online in Lebanon in 2026

If you sell in Lebanon today, you probably already sell online. A customer sees a post on Instagram, sends "price?" in a DM, you reply with a voice note, she sends her location on WhatsApp, a driver takes the parcel the next day and comes back with cash. It works. It also eats your evenings, loses orders in long chats, and stops growing the moment you have more messages than hours.

This guide is about doing the same thing on purpose: choosing your channels, taking payments that suit Lebanese customers, delivering anywhere in the country, pricing clearly in USD and LBP, and earning the trust of people who have never walked into your shop.

Start with the channels your customers already use

You do not need to be everywhere. You need each channel to do one job well.

• Instagram is your shop window. It is where people discover you, see the product on a real person, and decide they want it. Keep posting there.
• WhatsApp is your counter. It is where an order gets confirmed, a question gets answered and a delivery gets arranged, with customers who wrote to you first.
• An online store is your catalogue and your order book. It answers the questions you answer again and again (price, sizes, colours, delivery fee) and lets a customer order at midnight without waiting for you to wake up.

The mistake is asking one channel to do all three jobs. Instagram DMs make a poor order book. Orders get buried under stickers and story replies, and nobody can see what is still in stock.

Payments: cash on delivery first, Whish next

Cash on delivery is still what many Lebanese customers expect from a shop they do not know yet. It removes their risk and puts it on you: if they refuse the parcel, you pay for the trip.

Whish is the natural second option. The customer sends the amount to your Whish account from their phone, sends you proof, and you check that the money arrived before you ship. It suits prepaid orders, custom pieces and customers outside your usual zones.

A simple rule that works:

• Offer cash on delivery for regular items that are in stock.
• Ask for Whish before you ship for made-to-order, personalised or very large orders.
• Write both rules where customers can see them before they order.

Whatever you choose, check the current fees with Whish and with your courier, and decide in advance who pays them. A fee you discover after the sale comes straight out of your margin. For the detail, read our guides on cash on delivery and Whish payments.

Delivery across Lebanon

Nobody in Lebanon really uses a postal code, so an address is a conversation: the area, the street, the building, the floor and a landmark. "Near the pharmacy, blue gate" is a real address here. Plan for it.

• Split the country into zones. Start with the governorates and districts: Beirut, Mount Lebanon, the North, Akkar, the Bekaa, Baalbek-Hermel, the South and Nabatieh. Each zone gets its own fee and its own honest delivery time.
• Collect the full address once, properly. Area, street, building, floor, a landmark, a phone number that will answer and, if possible, a location pin the driver can open in Google Maps.
• Choose who delivers. Your own driver for nearby zones, a courier company for the rest, pickup from your shop for people who live close. Ask each courier for their current prices, their delivery times per zone, and how and when they hand you the cash they collect.
• Promise less, deliver on time. "2 to 3 working days to the North", kept, is better than "tomorrow", missed.

Prices in USD, with LBP made clear

Price in US dollars. It is what customers compare with, and it keeps your price list stable. If you also show Lebanese pounds, say which rate you used and when you last set it, and round to a sensible number.

Make the total impossible to misread: product price, delivery fee and total, in the same currency. Tell customers which currency the driver accepts and whether the driver can give change. A customer who prepared exact cash in LBP and finds a total in USD at the door is a refused order waiting to happen.

Trust is your real conversion rate

A new customer is about to send money, or open the door, to a shop they found on their phone. Everything you show either builds that trust or spends it.

• Show your prices. "DM for price" makes people wonder whether the price depends on who is asking. A visible price is a promise.
• Use real photos. Several angles, true colours, the product on a person or in a room. If a photo comes from the supplier, say so.
• Write your policies down. Delivery fees per zone, delivery times, exchanges, and what happens if an item arrives damaged. Short and clear beats long and legal.
• Answer quickly, and the same way every time. Same name, same number, same tone.
• Show real reviews only. A screenshot from a happy customer, shared with her permission, is worth more than anything you could write yourself.

From Instagram DMs to a real store, step by step

You can do most of this in a weekend, with or without software.

1. Write your price list. Every product, every variant (size, colour), every price in USD. If it is not written down, it does not exist.
2. Count your stock. Even roughly. Knowing you have 3 left in a size stops you from selling 5.
3. Write three short policies. Delivery (zones, fees, times), payment (cash on delivery, Whish, when you ask for payment first) and exchanges.
4. Set up your delivery zones and couriers. One fee and one delivery time per zone.
5. Keep one order sheet. One line per order with the date, customer, phone, area, items, total, payment method and status. Stop keeping orders in your head and in your chats.
6. Move the catalogue to a store. One link that shows everything, with prices, sizes and a checkout. Put it in your Instagram bio and send it when someone asks "price?".
7. Keep confirming on WhatsApp. The store takes the order, WhatsApp confirms it. Customers still like to talk to a person.

If you want the long version of step 6, read moving from Instagram to your own online store.

Where Mahallat fits

We built Mahallat for exactly this path. It gives you an online store and the system behind it: a checkout made for Lebanese addresses (a landmark field, a GPS pin, no postal code), cash on delivery and Whish built in, delivery zones by governorate with their own fees and times, prices in USD with LBP at your rate, order emails that send themselves, and a WhatsApp confirmation you send in one tap from your own number. The same dashboard tracks your stock, and the sales you make in your shop are logged there in seconds.

Every new store starts with a 14-day free trial, no card needed. After it, plans start at $20 a month, paid by Whish, with no transaction fees, because your customers pay you directly. See how it works or the pricing. And if you never use it, the steps above still work with a notebook and a spreadsheet.