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Rabat – M-Wallet will enable Moroccans to pay for a wide range of services and goods just with their mobile phones, the African Ecofin agency reported.
The “contactless payment” will come into effect by the end of November, in line with an agreement between Bank al-Maghrib, Morocco’s central bank, and the telecommunications regulator, in coordination with Moroccan banks.
According to the telecommunication regulator, Morocco had 44,027,000 mobile subscribers as of June 30, 2018, and the number is only growing.
Bank Al-Maghrib predicts that M-Wallet will handle as much as MAD 50 billion in transactions by 2023.
The platform intends to make payment easier reduce the theft of cash, and replace credit cards that charge merchants monthly and transaction fees.
In 2017, Bank Al-Maghrib started considering contactless mobile payment when Abdellatif Jouahri, governor of the bank expressed his optimism about the project, saying, “The principle of interoperability has been accepted.”
Banks and mobile carriers have twice before attempted to launch mobile payment systems. Maroc Telecom launched the Mobicash service in 2010 in partnership with Attijariwafa Bank. Meditel (now Orange) and BMCE Bank also jointly started a cash platform in 2013. The services are not widely used in Morocco.
