Launching a fintech in Morocco: the steps with a partner payment institution

In short

• What you launch: a financial product under your brand (wallet, payment accounts, cards, everyday services), operated on the infrastructure of a payment institution licensed by Bank Al-Maghrib.
• What the law covers: payment services are reserved for licensed institutions (law 103-12, article 18). The partner, for its part, must be approved by Bank Al-Maghrib, through principal agent status.
• The path with Chari Money: demo, agreement, onboarding and compliance, integration, sandbox, go-live once your use case is approved.
• If you only want to get paid: this is not a fintech project. A payment platform for merchants is enough.

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Launching a fintech in Morocco: what are we talking about?

Launching a fintech in Morocco means offering your users a financial service: a balance they hold, a way to pay, send money, settle a bill or top up a phone. The product can be a standalone app or a building block added to an existing service, such as a delivery app, a seller platform or a super app.

There are two routes. The first is to apply for your own payment institution license and build the whole infrastructure: accounts, compliance, network connections, reconciliation. The second is to rely on a payment institution that is already licensed, which operates the infrastructure and compliance while you keep the brand, the interface and the customer relationship. That is the fintech infrastructure model Chari Money offers partners, detailed in our guide what is fintech infrastructure.

Before going further, one question settles many projects: do you need to offer financial services to your users, or only to get paid by your customers? The two are not built the same way.

Step 0: check that you need a fintech project

A merchant, an e-commerce brand or a service provider that wants to collect payments from its customers does not need to launch a fintech. It needs a payment platform: a secure payment page, payment links, possibly an API. For that need, Chari Money operates ChariPay, its payment platform for merchants, and the right starting point is the payment gateway in Morocco described on charipay.ma.

A fintech project starts when your users hold something with you: an account, a balance, a card, or when you offer them a payment service for their own use. A few telling signals:

If your need is in the first two rows, a payment account in Morocco at ChariPay answers it without an infrastructure project. If you are in the last three, the rest of this guide is for you.

The legal framework in a few lines

Law 103-12 on credit institutions and similar bodies classifies payment institutions among the similar bodies. Its article 16 lists the payment services: fund transfers, cash deposits and withdrawals on a payment account, the execution of payment operations through any means of remote communication, and direct debits, card payments and transfers involving funds held in a payment account. Its article 18 prohibits anyone not licensed as a credit institution or a payment institution from carrying out these operations on a regular basis.

For a fintech that holds no license, the question is therefore: under which framework do you operate? With Chari Money, the answer is written on every page of this site: any partner wishing to use its financial services on a white-label basis must be approved by Bank Al-Maghrib, through the granting of principal agent status, and launching any new use case requires the prior approval of the Banking Supervision Directorate. Our article on principal agent status details what this implies, and the guide to fintech regulation in Morocco puts it in context. We quote these texts without interpreting them: only your advisor can give an opinion on your situation.

The six steps of a launch with Chari Money

The partner journey published on our home page follows six steps, in this order.

1. Request a demo. A first conversation to describe your use case: who your users are, which services you want to offer them, on which channels. The contact form separates "offer financial services" from "collect payments from your customers" from the start.
2. Sign the agreement. The contract formalizes the partnership and the scope of services.
3. Onboarding, compliance and Bank Al-Maghrib approval. You submit your KYB documents. Access to the services is subject to Bank Al-Maghrib's approval, through the granting of principal agent status, and each new use case requires the prior approval of the Banking Supervision Directorate.
4. Set up the integration. You complete the technical integration form and configure your API access.
5. Test in the sandbox. You run your journeys in a test environment, with no real money. The sandbox is a technical step: it is not an authorization to launch.
6. Go live. Once Bank Al-Maghrib's approval has been granted for your use case, you launch your financial products.

These steps cannot be skipped: a validated sandbox does not replace an approval, and an approval obtained for one use case does not automatically cover the next one.

Choosing your product's building blocks

A fintech does not need to launch everything on day one. The building blocks available on Chari Money's infrastructure can be combined:

• Payment accounts and wallets: each user has a payment account with a Moroccan IBAN, opened and activated through the API. Our guide to the white-label wallet describes the architecture.
• KYC/KYB onboarding: verification of individuals and businesses, with account levels matched to limits. See the KYC/KYB onboarding service.
• Cash-in and cash-out: your users fund or withdraw their balance through the agent network, by reference.
• Value-added services: bill payment, telecom top-ups, vouchers, transfers. Our guide to integrating bill payment walks through the full journey.
• Cards: issuing and lifecycle of cards linked to the accounts.

The right order depends on the frequency of use you are aiming for. A delivery app will often start with a wallet and paying out its couriers' earnings; a super app with top-ups and bills, which bring users back.

Preparing the file and the integration in parallel

Two workstreams move together: the compliance file and the technical integration.

On the compliance side, prepare early what onboarding will ask for: your company documents, a precise description of the use case, the user journey, a KYC policy matched to your limits. A vague use case is the first source of back-and-forth.

On the technical side, Chari Money's API documentation is public: end-to-end guides, an OpenAPI specification generated from production, a Postman collection. Sandbox access is requested from that documentation; you receive a test key and an invitation to the partner back office, then the team enables the modules you need and provisions test float for debit operations. Keys are specific to each environment: a sandbox key never works in production.

Common mistakes

• Confusing sandbox and authorization. Validated tests do not give the right to launch: approval of your use case is still required.
• Adding a service without declaring it. Each new use case requires the prior approval of the Banking Supervision Directorate, even if the technology is ready.
• Building infrastructure just to get paid. If your only need is to be paid, a payment platform is enough; to compare options, see how to choose a payment platform in Morocco.
• Hard-coding a form. Some APIs, such as bill payment, return the list of fields to display: your screen must be built from the response.

Next step

If you are launching a financial product under your brand, describe your use case to the team from the partners page or the contact form, and browse the API documentation to scope your integration. If you only want to collect payments from your customers, open a ChariPay account in test mode on charipay.ma.

Sources

• Bank Al-Maghrib - Law No. 103-12 on credit institutions and similar bodies, consolidated version (PDF, French), articles 16 and 18 - read on October 2, 2026