Not a single day goes by without someone posting the most random locations ever, and asking if anyone is coming from there to Beirut. I assume these people wanna order something off Amazon, but given how long it takes, and that the authorities at the airport might confiscate it, or make you pay absurd tariffs for releasing it to you, we’ve become desperate in trying to find kind travellers that might be willing to help us out.

OnYourWay.io is a Lebanese startup trying to fix this uniquely Lebanese problem, where they promise us PayPal every year, and where Uber had to do cash on delivery cause people here are still too scared to use their credit cards online for some reason (even with credit cards from banks designed solely for that purpose to be more “secure”).

How It Works

It’s a peer to peer service, and OYW is the intermediary. If you want to order something off Amazon for example, you can “post” what you need, and travellers using OYW might want to fulfil your request. In return, you “reward” the traveler for doing that service for you, with 3 suggested amounts: 20, 50 and 100USD (and you can also set your own reward).

The traveller then buys the item themselves, and meets you to give you whatever you’ve ordered. Once the transaction is complete, OYW charges your credit card, and transfers it, plus the reward, to the traveller. The service fee is 7% of what you purchased’s price, plus 1.99 euros for every order.

What I Liked

I loved the feature where you just paste the Amazon.com url of whatever you wanna order, and the form basically auto-fills itself, saving you the trouble.

I also liked that it’s a pretty smart way to solve a problem that seems unsolvable: ordering online to Lebanon. It’s sad we need to jump through hoops, either cause big corporations don’t care enough about our market, or because our government is so hungry for squeezing money out of us when we wanna buy something from abroad. This seems to be a streamlined solution, and some hope for the poor lost souls who post those silly statuses and never get a reply… (except maybe on the DXB-BEY route).

I hope they will create an Android app soon, and I will definitely register as a traveller next time I’m abroad to see if I can get a good enough reward to splurge on a VIP lounge somewhere (not the MEA one :P)