ABA Editorial · Oct 16, 2025 · 3 min read
Moroccan B2B e-commerce and fintech operator Chari has closed a USD 12 million Series A round, the largest ever raised by a Moroccan startup, and simultaneously announced that it has received the first Payment Institution license granted to a VC-backed company in Morocco.
Chari, the Casablanca-based B2B e-commerce and fintech platform founded in 2020 by Ismael Belkhayat and Sophia Alj, has closed a USD 12 million Series A funding round, co-led by SPE Capital and Orange Ventures, with participation from Global Founders Capital, Plug and Play, Endeavor Catalyst and several other investors. The round is the largest Series A ever raised by a Moroccan startup. It brings Chari's total capital raised to approximately USD 17 million.
Chari also announced that it has received a Payment Institution license from Bank Al-Maghrib, becoming the first venture-backed Moroccan company to receive one under Morocco's Law 103-12 framework for digital financial services. The license allows Chari to provide mobile payments, fund transfers, supplier settlements, and bill payments directly to its merchant customers rather than relying on partner banks to offer these services.
The company serves small independent mom-and-pop shops (known locally as proximity stores) across Morocco, which account for approximately 80 percent of Moroccan retail sales. Chari's mobile app and WhatsApp ordering channel let shopkeepers order fast-moving consumer goods and receive delivery within 24 hours. Over 20,000 shops have been digitized on the platform as of the funding announcement.
Co-founder and CEO Ismael Belkhayat, a former Boston Consulting Group strategy consultant, said in a statement that the funding would accelerate the development of Chari's merchant super-app and scale its Banking-as-a-Service platform, which opens the company's newly-licensed financial infrastructure to startups seeking to embed financial solutions into their own products. Co-founder Sophia Alj, a former McKinsey strategy consultant, said the license would help shopkeepers digitize their flows, increase their revenues, and compete with modern retail chains.
Chari was the first Moroccan startup admitted to Y Combinator's S21 batch in 2021 and has since expanded into Tunisia (2022) and Cote d'Ivoire through the acquisition of Diago, an Ivorian B2B commerce platform. The company has approximately 185 employees and positions itself as a super-app for proximity retailers in Francophone Africa.
The combination of a record Series A round and a first-mover regulatory license is being read as a validation of Morocco's growing fintech ecosystem, which has historically received less venture capital than Nigerian, Kenyan, or Egyptian peers despite the country's large retail economy and maturing digital infrastructure.