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Rabat – Morocco’s CIH banking group, and American financial services giant, Mastercard, celebrated yesterday in Casablanca launching a joint payment service ‘CIH PAY’ that will enable customers to use smartphones for payment transactions.
Launched in January 2022, CIH PAY came to life following a partnership between CIH bank and Mastercard Morocco signed in 2021, according to a joint press release.
With the new service, over 1.7 million Mastercard holders can fully digitize their account balance in a secure and transparent manner. “We hope customers, as well as businesses, will adopt CIH PAY as it is highly secure and will facilitate financial transactions,” argues Lotfi Sekkat, president director-general of CIH banking group.
Today’s payment landscape is ripe with opportunities to innovate while maintaining security, and convenience. “Mastercard is thrilled to partner with CIH Bank to launch CIH PAY. Supported with our Mastercard Digital Enablement service, We believe this launch will be the cornerstone in digitizing North Africa’s payment ecosystem,” states Mohamed Benomar, Mastercard’s general director for North Africa.
While it remains relatively limited, digital transactions are gaining momentum in North Africa, growing at an annual rate of 29% in 2020, against 23.8% in 2019, according to data from Mastercard.
Dematerializing financial transactions is a rising trend in Morocco. Earlier this month, global digital payment company Visa and digital payments manager Interbank Monetary Center (CMI) launched a first-of-its-kind channel for Moroccan businesses to facilitate Business to Business (B2B) money transactions.
The new digital payment services are in line with Morocco’s agenda to achieve financial inclusivity. Experts seem to agree that digitizing financial services, especially fintech, promises to serve the unbanked and underbanked, especially in Africa.
