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Since March, Israeli attacks on Beirut and the occupation of southern Lebanon have displaced over 1 million people. Families are sheltering with relatives, renting if they can, or sleeping in cars and out in the open, placing immense strain on already fragile infrastructure. Over 130,000 people have also crossed into Syria, many in urgent need of food, cash assistance, and shelter, according to a report by the International Organization for Migration.<\/p>\n
As humanitarian needs surge, so does the flow of money from abroad. Yet much of this support is not moving through traditional aid channels. Instead, it is being routed through digital fintech platforms to trusted individuals on the ground, who buy necessary items or distribute funds directly to the displaced.<\/p>\n
There is no real-time dataset capturing donations linked specifically to the war. However, remittances\u2014the closest available proxy\u2014offer context. Lebanon receives roughly $6 billion to $7 billion annually from abroad, equivalent to about a third of its GDP, according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 2023.<\/p>\n
The UNDP reported that remittance costs there averaged 11 percent, higher than the global average. In times of crisis, these flows often shift towards emergency support. What is different now is how that money moves: Increasingly, it is being sent instantly, peer-to-peer, through digital wallets.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese informal inflows are captured by the formal BDL figures and constitute around 70 percent of the inflows during the crisis,\u201d the UNDP added, noting that money is also often sent as cash with people traveling to the country.<\/p>\n
Being Lebanese myself, my social media feed has been inundated with former colleagues and friends setting up their channels to receive donations, sharing photos of receipts, and showing where money is going.<\/p>\n
One grass-roots campaign run by Lebanese lawyer Jad Essayli raised $65,125 in 10 days, purely through social media and digital transfers. When asked which platforms have been the most impactful, he and other fundraisers pointed to Whish Money, though many other platforms, including Paypal, Zelle, and Venmo are also being used.<\/p>\n
Originally launched to digitize gift cards, the company has evolved into a broad financial platform offering remittances, peer-to-peer transfers, and payment services with more than 2 million users across 110 countries. \u201cWe started off from the fact that we wanted to disrupt the distribution of gift cards,\u201d says Toufic Koussa, cofounder and chairman of Whish Money, describing how the company built an early wallet system in 2007 that allowed retailers to issue digital cards on demand. Over time, that infrastructure expanded into a full financial ecosystem.<\/p>\n
The company\u2019s core focus has been the unbanked and underbanked\u2014those with limited or unreliable access to traditional banking. Those groups became central during Lebanon\u2019s financial collapse. Globally, 1.4 billion people remain unbanked; the World Bank cites access to affordable financial services as being \u201ccritical for poverty reduction and economic growth."<\/p>\n
In Lebanon, as banks froze deposits and restricted withdrawals, platforms like Whish Money filled a critical gap, enabling people to move and access money outside the traditional system.<\/p>\n
That infrastructure now shapes how aid moves in crisis. Money from family, diaspora, or grass-roots campaigns lands straight in a digital wallet and can be spent immediately. On Whish Money, peer-to-peer transfers are the most popular, followed by international remittances. Koussa also notes that Whish Money is uniquely connected to US banking infrastructure, allowing users to link accounts abroad directly to wallets in Lebanon.<\/p>\n
Displacement is changing how people use these platforms. Overall growth is steady, but transaction patterns have shifted. Families are making bigger purchases, stocking up on essentials as uncertainty grows. Grocery bills that might have been $200 are now climbing as people prepare for the worst, Koussa says.<\/p>\n
There has also been a noticeable increase in money coming from abroad. \u201cYes, there is an increase,\u201d he says, attributing it partly to Ramadan and Eid, but also to \u201cpeople wanting to donate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Much of this aid is organized informally. Influencers and grass-roots organizers act as intermediaries, collecting funds from abroad and distributing them locally. \u201cWe have seen an increase also because there are many influencers promoting themselves as the right people to actually donate to,\u201d he says. This bottom-up system mirrors 2024, when Lebanon was also under attack by Israel. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t the government, it wasn\u2019t the donors, it was personal initiatives here and there that actually made people not starve to death.\u201d<\/p>\n
A January 2025 study by the Economic Research Forum found that trust in Lebanese public institutions has deteriorated, with the exception of the armed forces. \u201cAs for trust in the government, it is unambiguously lower in 2024 compared with 2013 and 2016,\u201d the report noted. \u201cA similar pattern is depicted for parliament, similarly with a significant decline since 2016.\u201d<\/p>\n
When asked whether these efforts are coordinated through fintech platforms like Whish Money, Koussa\u2019s answer is unequivocal: \u201c100 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the urgency, these flows are not unregulated. \u201cIt does go through the monitoring process and the [anti-money laundering],\u201d he stresses, noting that recipients are vetted and due diligence is conducted. The challenge is to balance speed and accessibility with the safeguards required in cross-border financial systems.<\/p>\n
This shift is not without risk. In countries like the United Arab Emirates, fundraising without a license\u2014even through social media\u2014is a criminal offense. In Lebanon, digital donations operate in a far looser regulatory gray zone, shaped more by anti-money-laundering rules than a dedicated fundraising framework.<\/p>\n
At the core is trust. With faith in banks shattered, digital platforms are filling both a practical and psychological void. \u201cI think nowadays it will boil down to trust. Trust is the new currency,\u201d Koussa says.<\/p>\n
For the more than 1 million people displaced inside Lebanon, this trust is not abstract. It determines whether money sent from abroad arrives safely, quickly, and in a form that can be used immediately to meet urgent needs<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re fighting a system that has ruled the world for the last 400 years,\u201d he says. When asked whether he thinks they will win, he projects confidence. \u201cRetail banking, the way we used to know it, I think it\u2019s done. Banks will become pipelines; the real innovation in money and inclusion is happening in fintech.\u201d<\/p>\n