The Buy Now, Pay Later FinTech Model in Syria: A Risk-Governed Framework for Financial Inclusion, Consumer Protection, Islamic Compliance, and Post-Conflict Economic Recovery

Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) has become one of the most visible forms of embedded digital credit, allowing consumers to split purchases into short-term instalments at the point of sale. In mature markets, BNPL has expanded merchant conversion, raised average order values, and widened credit access for younger and underserved users, but it has also raised concerns about over-borrowing, weak affordability testing, opaque fees, fragmented credit reporting, and inadequate dispute-resolution rights. This paper develops a Syria-specific, risk-governed BNPL framework that connects digital lending, post-conflict economic recovery, financial inclusion, consumer protection, Islamic finance, sanctions compliance, and digital-payment modernization. The study uses a qualitative policy-synthesis and design-science methodology, integrating international BNPL research, regulatory developments in the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, Saudi Arabia, and Malaysia, as well as Syria-specific macroeconomic and financial-sector evidence. It also builds on the author’s prior published work on FinTech innovation, the Digital Lira, financial technologies in Syria, FinTech in industry, agriculture, public health and tourism, AI and FinTech, digital healthcare, e-mobility, renewable-energy finance, and Syria’s technology-driven recovery. The paper argues that BNPL in Syria should not be launched as an unregulated retail-credit product. Instead, it should be sequenced as a controlled, low-limit, Sharia-compliant, data-protected, merchant-linked, digitally supervised credit instrument designed to support household liquidity, SME sales, formalization, digital payments, and responsible consumption. The paper contributes a Syrian BNPL Readiness Matrix, a Risk-Governed BNPL Operating Model, a Consumer Protection Framework, a regulatory roadmap, and research propositions for future empirical testing. The central conclusion is that BNPL could support financial inclusion and post-conflict recovery in Syria only if embedded within strong licensing, e-KYC, affordability assessment, AML/CFT controls, transparent disclosure, credit-bureau integration, digital identity, Sharia governance, and supervisory technology.