ABA Editorial · Oct 4, 2025 · 12 min read
On 15 October 2025, Bank Al-Maghrib granted Chari the first payment institution license ever issued to a venture-backed startup in Morocco, paired with a record USD 12 million Series A. Morocco raised approximately USD 95 million across 40 deals in 2024, ranking sixth on the continent. Inside the regulatory breakthrough, the new Moroccan fintech hub, and why foreign players are arriving in Casablanca at speed.
For most of the last decade, Morocco was the African fintech market everyone pointed at and no one actually worked in. The talent was there. The banking sector was serious. The proximity to Europe and the Gulf was obvious. The National Financial Inclusion Strategy, launched by Bank Al-Maghrib and the Ministry of Economy and Finance in 2018, had set credible targets (50 percent financial inclusion by 2023, 75 percent by 2030). But the regulatory framework around payment institutions stayed conservative, licensing was slow, and very few startups actually made it through to operating status. That started to change in 2024, and it changed decisively in 2025. This is a market report on what happened, which companies are building, and what the Bank Al-Maghrib licensing decisions of October 2025 actually mean for the Casablanca fintech hub in 2026.
On 15 October 2025, Bank Al-Maghrib granted Morocco's first payment institution license to a venture-backed startup. The company was Chari, a Casablanca-based B2B platform that had spent three years building technology for the roughly 25,000 mom-and-pop stores (épiceries) it serves across Morocco. The license was paired with the largest Series A funding round in Moroccan startup history: USD 12 million, with industry sources estimating a post-money valuation of USD 40 to 50 million. That dual achievement (regulatory approval and record funding on the same day) signaled a shift in how Morocco's central bank approaches venture-backed financial innovation. Before October 2025, payment institution licenses in Morocco had gone to bank subsidiaries (Attijari Payment, Damane Cash from Banque Centrale Populaire, Al Filahi Cash) or to long-established non-bank operators. Granting one to a VC-backed startup was a precedent.
Chari's path through the license process is instructive for anyone watching Moroccan fintech policy. The company had to demonstrate three years of documented operations in Morocco, a complete technology stack developed and maintained locally, and compliance capabilities that matched what Bank Al-Maghrib expected from a payment institution. The regulator's processing timeline, typical for Morocco, was approximately 18 to 24 months from initial application. This is the opposite of the "move fast and get forgiveness later" model that characterized Nigerian fintech for most of the 2010s. Bank Al-Maghrib wants serious applicants who have already proven they can operate at scale and who can demonstrate local technical depth. The trade-off is that licensing is slow, but what comes through the other side is durable.
Morocco raised approximately USD 95 million across 40 deals in 2024, ranking sixth in Africa for startup funding according to data compiled by regional startup trackers. That is small next to Kenya, South Africa, Egypt, or Nigeria, but it represents a clear jump from earlier years and is concentrated in a handful of breakout companies.
Bank Al-Maghrib data cited in coverage of the Yassir Maroc licensing application reveals an important structural fact about the Moroccan payments market: as of 2023, nearly 84 percent of payment transactions by volume were carried out by wallets issued by payment institutions, compared to 16 percent by wallets linked directly to bank accounts. In value terms, 70 percent of wallet transactions went through payment institutions versus 30 percent through banks. This is a remarkably high share for payment-institution wallets in an African context, and it explains why every foreign fintech eyeing Morocco wants a payment institution license rather than a bank partnership.
The country's financial inclusion trajectory supports the thesis. According to the World Bank Global Findex 2021, 44 percent of Moroccan adults held a formal financial account, up from 29 percent in 2017, making Morocco one of only four countries globally to achieve double-digit percentage-point growth in account ownership over that period. Roughly 15 million Moroccan adults remain unbanked, with women and rural communities facing the largest access gaps. The gender gap (56 percent of men versus 33 percent of women with accounts, a 23-point gap essentially unchanged since 2017) is the ongoing problem the 2018 National Financial Inclusion Strategy was designed to address.
One widely cited data point from Bank Al-Maghrib research illustrates why non-bank financial behavior is so prevalent: 88 percent of Moroccans who use financing solutions rely on informal services, particularly rotating savings and credit associations locally known as daret or tontine. The annual flow through Moroccan ROSCAs is estimated at 40 billion Moroccan dirhams (approximately USD 4 billion), equivalent to 28 percent of the total savings collected by Moroccan banks. This is the market that digital ROSCA platforms such as Money Fellows (an Egyptian fintech pursuing a Moroccan license as of 2024) have identified as their opportunity.
Chari, led by co-founders Ismael Belkhayat and Sophia Alj, is the headline company. Beyond the October 2025 payment institution license, Chari has been expanding aggressively through acquisition, buying Ivorian player Diago and two other companies in under a year according to regional reporting on the B2B e-commerce sector. The Chari strategy combines FMCG distribution to small shops with embedded payments and financial services layered on top of the distribution relationship.
ORA Technologies, founded in 2023 by Omar Alami, is building a consumer super-app around two products: ORA Cash (a universal mobile wallet) and Kooul (a food delivery service). The company raised a USD 1.9 million pre-Series A in March 2025 and closed a USD 7.5 million Series A in July 2025 to scale both products. ORA Cash claims more than 50,000 accounts in five months, and Kooul has attracted over 15,000 active customers in its first ten months. The "account opened in 15 seconds" pitch is the distinctive positioning, and in a market where banking onboarding is often slow and document-heavy, speed is a real product differentiator.
Alya, founded in Casablanca in 2023 by Brahim Zaid, is the first BNPL firm in Morocco to receive formal Bank Al-Maghrib authorization (in 2024). Alya is integrated into the Interbank Electronic Payment Center (CIM), which is a technical prerequisite for operating at scale in Morocco. According to Alya, the Moroccan BNPL sector is currently estimated at 15 to 20 billion Moroccan dirhams (USD 1.6 to 2.2 billion) and could reach USD 5 billion by 2030. The company's early 2025 funding round brought in Proparco (via the Digital Africa venture fund), US VC Plug and Play, and MFounders, a fund created by Moroccan diaspora members.
PayTic, founded by Imad Boumahdi, is the infrastructure play. PayTic automates the back-office for card issuers and processors: reconciliation, chargebacks, compliance workflows, fraud operations. In April 2025 it secured a USD 4 million seed extension led by AfricInvest's CAIF with global co-investors, citing a customer base spanning Morocco, the UK, the Middle East, and North America. Selling the picks and shovels to banks and processors is a less glamorous business than consumer fintech, but it is the category where Moroccan technical depth translates most cleanly into export revenue.
Talaty, founded in 2022, is attacking SME lending at the source by partnering with Moroccan banks to deliver AI-powered scoring and instant-decision lending-as-a-service. The company secured funding from Witamax and Renew Capital in December 2024 to expand in Morocco and across Francophone Africa.
Others worth watching: Woliz, founded 2025 in Casablanca, builds retail technology for neighborhood shops and claims to serve more than 55,000 small businesses with approximately USD 50 million in gross merchandise volume. Joro Cash, a P2P mobile wallet issued by Lana Cash (a CIH Bank subsidiary), was named Best Fintech Startup at the AfricArena 2024 Grand Summit. Tookeez aggregates fragmented loyalty points into a single spendable wallet. WafR, founded by Ismail Bargach and Reda Sellak, turns Morocco's épicerie promotional network into a fintech distribution graph.
The strongest signal that the Moroccan market has moved into serious-growth territory is which foreign players are arriving. Yassir, the Algerian mobility super-app that raised a USD 150 million Series B, has filed for a Moroccan payment institution license with Bank Al-Maghrib. Money Fellows, the Egyptian digital ROSCA platform with approximately 4.7 million users in Egypt, is in final stages of Moroccan licensing. EdFaPay, a Saudi Arabia-based fintech, has entered Morocco as part of its MENA rollout. All three are pursuing payment institution licenses rather than attempting to enter through bank partnerships, because the payment institution framework is more permissive and the regulatory wallet data (the 84 percent of transactions by volume noted earlier) makes it the clearly more profitable category.
Morocco is also structurally attractive because a Bank Al-Maghrib license often facilitates subsequent licensing in UEMOA and CEMAC countries, where regulators respect Bank Al-Maghrib's due diligence. This makes Casablanca a natural launching pad for Francophone African regional expansion, and it explains why multiple MENA and Gulf fintechs are targeting Morocco as their African gateway.
In January 2025, Morocco's Ministry of Digital Transition and Administration Reform launched the Morocco FinTech Center, a public-private partnership designed as a one-stop shop for fintech companies seeking to enter or scale in the Moroccan market. At launch the initiative brought together approximately 15 banks and financial institutions to offer mentoring, incubation, skills development, and regulatory navigation support. In November 2025, the Center partnered with the Mohammed VI Investment Fund, Caisse de Depôt et de Gestion (CDG), and Tamwilcom to establish an investment mechanism targeting approximately USD 269 million (2.5 billion Moroccan dirhams) into the Moroccan startup ecosystem across multiple sectors including fintech.
Morocco also joined the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) in 2025, which connects Moroccan banks into the continental payment infrastructure operated by Afreximbank. This is the regulatory move that makes Morocco materially more useful as a cross-border hub, because Moroccan-licensed fintechs can now route payments to and from the other 18 PAPSS-connected countries without going through correspondent banking in Europe.
On the CBDC front, Bank Al-Maghrib Governor Abdellatif Jouahri announced in July 2025 that Morocco was conducting a central bank digital currency experiment in collaboration with the Central Bank of Egypt, with support from the World Bank, focused on cross-border transfer use cases. This is preliminary work rather than a live product, but it confirms the direction: Bank Al-Maghrib is positioning Morocco to be an early mover on institutional-grade digital currency infrastructure.
Morocco's advantages are real: currency stability (the dirham is a managed float against a euro-weighted basket), an educated technical workforce, strong banking infrastructure, geographic proximity to Europe and the Gulf, a serious regulator, and a large domestic market of approximately 37 million people. The headwinds are also real. The gender gap in financial inclusion remains stubborn. Rural access to digital finance is still limited. Regulatory approval timelines are long compared to peer markets. And the relatively conservative licensing posture means new entrants cannot compete on speed-to-market the way they can in Nigeria or Kenya.
For the Moroccan fintech ecosystem in 2026, the question is whether the Chari license becomes a template that accelerates subsequent approvals or whether it remains an exception. Bank Al-Maghrib's Morocco FinTech Center framing and the Governor's public statements point toward the template interpretation. If that is right, expect two or three more venture-backed payment institution licenses to be granted in 2026, with the foreign entrants (Yassir, Money Fellows, possibly EdFaPay) likely to be first in line.
For founders, for investors, and for regional expansionists in West African fintech, Morocco is worth paying serious attention to in 2026. It will not be the loudest fintech market on the continent, and it will not be the fastest. But the combination of regulatory seriousness and market depth means the winners here will be durable.
This report draws on Cabinet Lafrouji Avocats coverage of the Chari payment institution license (November 2025); Startup Researcher's "9 Moroccan FinTech Startups to Follow in 2025" feature (September 2025); Fintechnews Middle East coverage of top Moroccan fintechs (February 2026); Launch Base Africa reporting on foreign fintech entries into Morocco (July 2024); Morocco World News coverage of Bank Al-Maghrib's CBDC experiment announcement (July 2025); Attijari Payment, Visa, and Woliz partnership materials (September 2025); Bank Al-Maghrib and the UNSGSA office public communications on financial inclusion; and the World Bank Global Findex 2021 database.