Four markets, four architectures
This guide covers four North African markets: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Egypt. They are neighbors, but they share no regional financial integration. The region has four countries, four incompatible architectures, four exchange regimes, and no regional retail interoperability. A merchant accepting payments in Casablanca cannot replicate its setup in Cairo, or even in Tunis. It would need a new local acquiring contract, a different domestic scheme, and that country’s own exchange regime. What the four have in common is usage, not infrastructure. In all four, cash is still the default everyday payment method, and cash on delivery shapes e-commerce.
Each country has built the same three pieces: a central bank RTGS, a retail clearing house, and a card switch. Governance, however, differs sharply. In Morocco, a single bank-owned entity handled all merchant acquiring for two decades. In Algeria, the dominant scheme belongs to the postal operator, not the banks. In Tunisia, everything runs through an interbank switch set up in 1989 and through the postal service. In Egypt, the central bank built a national scheme and an instant payment rail, and pushes both out through government payment flows.
| Country | Card scheme / domestic acquiring | Instant rail | Bulk clearing | RTGS | Regulator |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🇲🇦 Morocco | CMI (Centre Monétique Interbancaire, 2001); switching sold to HPS in 2016 | Instant interbank transfer (GSIMT, June 1, 2023) | SIMT (GSIMT) | SRBM | Bank Al-Maghrib |
| 🇩🇿 Algeria | CIB card (SATIM for GIE Monétique, 1997) and Edahabia (Algérie Poste, 2016) | – | ATCI (Centre de Pré-Compensation Interbancaire) | ARTS (2006) | Banque d’Algérie |
| 🇹🇳 Tunisia | Monétique Tunisie (SMT), 1989; e-DINAR (La Poste Tunisienne, 2000) | – | SIBTEL | Elyssa-RTGS (2022, formerly SGMT) | Banque Centrale de Tunisie |
| 🇪🇬 Egypt | Meeza (Egyptian Banks Company for the CBE, 2019); National Switch “123” | InstaPay / IPN (EBC for the CBE, 2022) | EG-ACH (EBC) | RTGS (CBE) | Central Bank of Egypt |
| 🇲🇷 Mauritania | GIMTEL (17 banks and Mauripost, under the Banque Centrale de Mauritanie) | – | GIMTEL (card switch and mobile switch) | Not reported | Banque Centrale de Mauritanie |
Read these volumes against population size and distribution channels. In six years, Egypt has issued more domestic cards than Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia combined have issued in a quarter century. It plugged its scheme into public-sector salaries, subsidies, and pensions. Algeria’s card base, by contrast, is overwhelmingly postal. Algérie Poste, which holds the mass-market CCP postal accounts, issues four times as many cards as all the country’s banks put together. A card base measures how widely cards are distributed, not how often they are used to pay. It does show which channel controls that distribution: government payments in Egypt, postal accounts in Algeria.
Morocco: CMI’s two-decade monopoly and how it ended
The Centre Monétique Interbancaire (CMI), set up by nine Moroccan banks and operating since 2001, was the only acquirer in the kingdom for two decades. Acquiring is the contractual relationship in which a financial institution signs up a merchant, processes its card transactions, and pays it the proceeds. CMI signed the merchant contracts, deployed the POS terminals, ran the e-commerce gateway, and handled fraud prevention centrally. A Moroccan merchant that wanted to accept cards therefore signed with CMI, since there was no other acquirer to compete for its business. According to figures reported in the business press during the competition investigation, CMI handled more than 97% of card acquiring in the country.
The first change came in 2016. CMI sold its switching and clearing business to HPS (Hightech Payment Systems), a listed Moroccan software vendor, for MAD 120 million. Switching is the routing and authorization of transactions between terminals, issuers, and acquirers. The deal split two functions that had always been combined, which is still unusual: merchant acquiring stayed with CMI, while switching moved to a third party. It also created a technical option that would only be used later, since a switch independent of the acquirer can connect several competing acquirers.
The market opened as a result of a 2024 competition ruling. Acting on a complaint filed by NAPS SA in May 2023, Morocco’s Competition Council (Conseil de la concurrence) issued Decision No. 152/ق/2024 on October 31, 2024. The decision made binding the commitments offered by CMI and its shareholder banks. The main commitment concerns the acquiring business itself. CMI exits merchant acquiring and transfers all of its merchant contracts, for POS terminals and online payments alike. The buyers are payment institutions or dedicated bank subsidiaries, and CMI opens its technical processing platform to them on “fair, transparent, and non-discriminatory” terms. The Competition Council and Bank Al-Maghrib jointly monitor implementation.
| Question | Before (2001–2024) | After (from May 1, 2025) |
|---|---|---|
| Who signs the merchant? | CMI alone, for almost the entire market | Eleven operators hold an acquiring license from Bank Al-Maghrib: dedicated bank subsidiaries and independent payment institutions |
| Who switches and clears? | HPS since 2016, on CMI’s behalf | CMI becomes a neutral technical platform, open to new acquirers on non-discriminatory terms |
| Who sets interchange? | Industry-wide schedule; 1.20% until September 2024 | Bank Al-Maghrib: 0.65% excl. tax since September 2024, 0.50% excl. tax from October 1, 2026, 0.15% for government agencies and neighborhood retail |
| Can the merchant negotiate? | Barely: there is only one counterparty | Yes, on the acquirer’s margin, but interchange itself is capped by regulation |
| Can the fee be passed on to the customer? | No | No: the merchant alone bears the acquiring fee, whatever the payment method |
- New entrants already live: Naps, VPS, Al Barid Bank, Damane Cash (Bank of Africa), Al Filahi Cash (Crédit Agricole du Maroc), Lana Cash (CIH Bank), and M2T via Chaabi Payment (BCP).
- Migration volume: roughly 55,000 merchant contracts and 65,000 POS terminals must move from CMI to the new acquirers (Moroccan business press, 2025).
- What to check in a 2026 contract: who the legal acquirer is, who operates the switch, which MID carries over in the migration, and whether transaction IDs stay stable for reconciliation.
- What stays the same: CMI remains technically unavoidable. Moving out of its contracts does not mean moving off its infrastructure.
Morocco: the rails, a card used for cash, and a wallet that won’t take off
Beneath the card layer, Morocco’s settlement architecture rests on two separate systems: a real-time gross settlement system and a retail clearing house. The SRBM (Système des Règlements Bruts du Maroc), operated by Bank Al-Maghrib, is the only place where payments settle with finality in central bank money. The SIMT (Système Interbancaire Marocain de Télécompensation), run by GSIMT, handles account-based instruments: credit transfers, direct debits, checks, and bills of exchange. Cards are excluded, since they go through the card processing circuit. SIMT net balances settle in the SRBM, so retail clearing also settles in central bank money.
Bank Al-Maghrib and GSIMT added instant interbank transfers to this infrastructure on June 1, 2023. Transfers execute in under 20 seconds. The service runs 24/7, and each transfer is capped at MAD 20,000 during a transition period. Consumers could use it free of charge for the first three months. The goal is to replace part of cash payments with immediate account-to-account transfers. Uptake remains modest compared with other account-based instruments, as volumes for its first full year show.
Mobile payments were developed to close this gap between ownership and use. Morocco created a legal category of payment institution, separate from banks, and licensed about 20 of them (Wafacash, M2T, Cash Plus, NAPS, Barid Cash, Maroc Telecom, Orange, and others). In 2018 it launched a mobile payment switch (known as MarocPay) that made all m-wallets interoperable, and HPS later certified these providers for ATM withdrawals. The market had 21 m-wallet offerings in 2024 (Bank Al-Maghrib). CMI has cited more than 8 million wallet holders in 2024–2025, a figure no Bank Al-Maghrib source confirms. Adoption remains far below the targets set at launch. And the reported number of holders says nothing about how often the channel is actually used to pay merchants.
On the acceptance side, CMI’s management gave the Moroccan business press an estimate for fiscal 2025: more than 240 million card transactions (up about 15%), 85% of them made with Moroccan cards in Morocco. Merchants reportedly took in nearly MAD 100 billion (up about 13%), including some MAD 32 billion on foreign cards. On top of that comes Fatourati, CMI’s multi-biller payment platform, reported at more than 250 million transactions and MAD 220 billion collected. These figures are operator estimates, not central bank statistics, and they cover fiscal 2025. The Bank Al-Maghrib series cited above cover 2024.
Tunisia: SMT, the postal e-DINAR, and the only two gateways
Tunisian card processing rests on one long-established central player, Monétique Tunisie, formally the Société Monétique Tunisie (SMT), owned by the country’s banks and in operation since 1989. It plays three roles. It is the national switch, an aggregator for mobile and bill payments, and the operator of the Click to Pay SMT e-commerce gateway, used by most local banks. That makes it the near-mandatory entry point for any merchant that wants to accept payments online in Tunisia.
The second pillar of Tunisian card payments is run by the postal operator. Since 2000, La Poste Tunisienne has operated e-DINAR, a prepaid card combined with an online payment gateway. Tunisia has historically had only two e-commerce gateways: SMT’s and La Poste’s. e-DINAR reached mass adoption through D17, the consumer mobile payment app sold under the DigiPostBank brand. D17 manages the e-DINAR account and handles card top-ups, bill payments, person-to-person transfers, and merchant payments by Masterpass-certified QR code.
| Click to Pay SMT | e-DINAR solution | |
|---|---|---|
| Operator | Société Monétique Tunisie (Tunisian banks) | La Poste Tunisienne |
| Ownership | Most of the country’s commercial banks | e-DINAR prepaid accounts and cards, D17 app |
| Cards accepted | Tunisian domestic cards (CIB), Visa and Mastercard, including foreign cards, with 3-D Secure | La Poste’s e-DINAR cards, plus bank-issued cards for top-ups |
| Why it matters to the merchant | Broadest bank coverage; integration set up bank by bank | Reaches unbanked customers that bank-issued cards miss |
The Banque Centrale de Tunisie has modernized the interbank settlement leg. Elyssa-RTGS, live since 2022, replaced the SGMT (Système de Gros Montants de Tunisie), the first national RTGS, which had a minimum of TND 100,000 per transfer. The SGMT acronym still appears in bank agreements and in procedures written before the switchover, where in practice it refers to its successor, Elyssa-RTGS. Retail clearing runs through SIBTEL, whose balances also settle in Elyssa.
Algeria: SATIM, the CIB card, and the postal scheme that dwarfs it
Algeria’s interbank card scheme is the CIB card, launched in 1997. It is operated by SATIM (Société d’Automatisation des Transactions Interbancaires et de Monétique) on behalf of GIE Monétique, the Algerian banks’ card consortium, and of the banks themselves. SATIM also runs the national e-commerce gateway, which centralizes online payments made with domestic cards. An Algerian merchant accepting cards on its website therefore connects to this shared national infrastructure through its bank, not through an international payment service provider (PSP).
Yet the scheme that actually dominates the country belongs to the postal operator. Edahabia, launched in 2016 by Algérie Poste, is built on postal checking accounts (CCP), which a very large share of the population holds. It accounts for 17,655,039 cards out of 21,899,581 payment cards in 2025, more than 80% of the total, versus 4,244,542 CIB cards. CIB ↔ Edahabia interoperability was formalized in an agreement between Algérie Poste, SATIM, and GIE Monétique, so both cards work on the same acceptance network. This domestic scheme is barely documented outside Algeria. Sizing acceptance on bank-issued cards alone misses more than four cards out of five.
| CIB card | Edahabia | |
|---|---|---|
| Issuer | Algerian banks, via SATIM for GIE Monétique | Algérie Poste |
| Since | 1997 | 2016 |
| Cards in circulation, 2025 | 4,244,542 cards | 17,655,039 cards |
| Underlying accounts | Bank accounts | Postal checking accounts (CCP), very widely held |
| Acceptance | POS terminals and the national e-commerce gateway run by SATIM | Same acceptance network, under an interoperability agreement with SATIM and GIE Monétique |
| Key takeaway | The banking sector’s “official” scheme | The scheme that really determines cardholder reach |
The legal framework for online commerce is Law No. 18-05 of May 10, 2018, on electronic commerce. It restricts the operation of payment platforms to a closed group. Electronic payments must go through dedicated payment platforms set up and operated exclusively by banks licensed by the Banque d’Algérie and by Algérie Poste. These platforms connect to terminals over the state-owned telecom operator’s network. The law distinguishes domestic from cross-border transactions. It prohibits any electronic transaction involving materials, equipment, or products classified as sensitive under the regulations.
Egypt: Meeza, InstaPay, and the central bank in the driver’s seat
Egypt is the market in the region where the state has most openly steered the build-out of the payment system. The infrastructure is concentrated in one entity, the Egyptian Banks Company (EBC), which runs most of it under the oversight of the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE). EBC operates the Meeza card scheme, the IPN / InstaPay instant rail, the EG-ACH clearing house, and the national ATM switch under the “123” acceptance brand. Final settlement takes place in the CBE’s RTGS, in Egyptian pounds. This concentration sets Egypt apart from the other three countries in the region, where separate operators run the card switch, retail clearing, and settlement.
Meeza, launched in 2019, reached more than 43.5 million cards issued by June 2025. That growth came from a policy decision, not from cardholder demand. The central bank made the scheme the channel for paying public-sector salaries, subsidies, and pensions, which put a card in the hands of people who had never had one. The same approach, a domestic scheme distributed through state channels, appears elsewhere in the region, notably with Himyan in Qatar. For an Egyptian merchant, accepting Meeza is the key to the largest part of the cardholder base, the part the international schemes do not reach.
A legal framework backs this rollout. Law No. 18 of 2019 on non-cash payments was enacted on April 16, 2019. It requires government bodies and majority state-owned companies to make their payments by means other than cash, including board attendance fees, salaries, expert fees, and social security contributions. It also requires government agencies and public-facing services to offer electronic payment methods. Its implementing regulations were published in the Official Gazette on September 7, 2020, and the compliance period was extended to September 7, 2021. Violations carry a fine of 2% to 10% of the amount paid in cash, capped at EGP 1 million.
Egypt: Fawry, cash-in networks, and installment payments
Cash-in means that a licensed third party collects cash for an online purchase and then pays the amount to the merchant electronically. In a country where cash still dominates, the touchpoint for digital payments is therefore a physical collection network, not an instrument the customer holds. The sequence is always the same. The customer orders online, receives a payment reference, and pays cash at a neighborhood store connected to an aggregator. The aggregator notifies the merchant and transfers the funds. Egypt has turned this into an industry, as Fawry’s volumes show.
Entering Egypt’s payments market requires a central bank license. In June 2025, the Central Bank of Egypt published its licensing and registration rules for Payment System Operators (PSOs) and Payment Service Providers (PSPs), under Law No. 194 of 2020 on the central bank and the banking system. The rules cover deposits to and withdrawals from payment accounts, and the execution of transactions and fund transfers. They also cover issuing payment instruments and electronic acceptance channels, and sending and receiving transfers in Egyptian pounds. They create Categories A and B, with capital requirements tiered by the services provided. Established players operate under licenses granted before these rules. Paymob has held a CBE Payments Facilitator license since 2018.
Cash and cash on delivery: e-commerce’s real payment method
Cash on delivery (COD) means paying for an order in cash when it is delivered, directly to the courier. It is still the default way to collect e-commerce payments in all four countries, and it is declining only slowly. Two published indicators show its weight. In Morocco, Bank Al-Maghrib finds that nearly 86% of the value that goes through a Moroccan card comes out as cash at an ATM (2024 report). In Egypt, a Crowd Analyzer study covering 2024–2025, reported by Ahram Online, found that 90% of consumers say they prefer to pay on delivery. The second figure is a stated preference, not an observed market share. That limits its statistical weight, but it does not weaken the strength of the signal.
Several factors explain why it persists. The first is distrust of online payments in markets where recourse for non-delivery is uncertain. The second is low banking penetration outside the big cities. Add exchange limits that make cards useless outside the country, and a retail culture in which people pay for what they have seen. For the buyer, cash on delivery works as free insurance provided by the seller, who keeps the risk of non-delivery or a non-conforming product.
| Item | Cash on delivery | Prepaid online payment |
|---|---|---|
| Collection fee | Courier collection fees, usually a percentage of the amount collected, on top of the delivery charge | Acquiring fee; in Morocco, interchange capped at 0.50% excl. tax from October 1, 2026 |
| Time to get paid | Delivery, then periodic payout by the courier: several weeks of DSO (days sales outstanding) | A few business days, depending on the acquirer |
| Failure rate | Refusals at delivery and returns: the merchant pays all outbound and return shipping | Authorization declines, with no logistics cost |
| Risk borne | Credit risk on the courier holding the cash, and embezzlement risk | Fraud and chargeback risk on cards; none on a push instant transfer |
| Reconciliation | Three sources to reconcile: orders, courier delivery slips, incoming transfers | Two sources: card batches and acquirer payouts |
- Price differently: offer an explicit discount for paying online, or charge a service fee on COD where local law allows. In Morocco, the acquiring fee itself can never be passed on to the customer.
- Lower perceived risk: take payment at shipment rather than at order, publish a clear return policy, and provide proof of delivery.
- Offer instant transfers where they exist: InstaPay in Egypt, instant interbank transfers in Morocco. The marginal cost is low, funds arrive immediately, and there are no chargebacks.
- Plug in a cash-in network (Fawry or Aman in Egypt, bill payment aggregators elsewhere) to turn a cash-paying customer into an electronic payment without going through the delivery driver.
- Track returns by channel: the COD return rate determines whether a vertical is profitable, far more than the fee rate does.
Exchange controls decide whether a setup is feasible
Exchange controls are the rules a government uses to regulate the holding and movement of foreign currency on its territory. In this region, they determine whether a payment setup is feasible at all. The choice of technical provider comes second. The Moroccan dirham, the Algerian dinar, and the Tunisian dinar are not freely convertible, and Egypt has gone through periods of foreign currency shortages. The first questions to work through are therefore which entity collects the money, in which currency, and how the funds get out of the country. The standard EU setup, with a single entity, a cross-border acquirer, and centralized payouts, does not work in any of these four countries without changes.
| Country | Local acquiring | Currency outflows for residents | What a foreign merchant needs to know |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🇲🇦 Morocco | Open since May 1, 2025: 11 acquirers licensed by Bank Al-Maghrib, with CMI becoming a technical platform | Allowances set by the Office des Changes, Morocco’s foreign exchange regulator: from January 1, 2026, the e-commerce allowance for individuals rises to MAD 20,000 a year (from MAD 15,000) | Interchange capped and falling (0.50% excl. tax from October 1, 2026); fees can never be passed on to the customer |
| 🇩🇿 Algeria | Closed: payment platforms run exclusively by banks licensed by the Banque d’Algérie and by Algérie Poste (Law No. 18-05) | Very restricted | No foreign acquiring; a local entity, a local account, and a SATIM connection are mandatory |
| 🇹🇳 Tunisia | Two long-standing gateways: Click to Pay SMT and La Poste Tunisienne’s e-DINAR solution | International technology card: TND 1,000 a year for an individual, TND 10,000 for a resident company, up to TND 100,000 for a company with the “Start-up” label; online use, ICT spending only | Selling software subscriptions to Tunisian small businesses runs into the allowance cap, not the payment method |
| 🇪🇬 Egypt | PSO/PSP framework published by the Central Bank of Egypt in June 2025 (Law No. 194 of 2020): Categories A and B with tiered capital | Regulated; InstaPay-specific limits: EGP 70,000 per transaction, EGP 120,000 per day, EGP 400,000 per month, per linked account | Accepting Meeza is not optional: it is the largest cardholder base, fed by government payments |
Morocco has raised several of its foreign exchange limits. The Office des Changes’ new General Instruction on Foreign Exchange Operations, in force from 2026, sets the new amounts. The e-commerce allowance for individuals, both residents and Moroccans living abroad, rises from MAD 15,000 to MAD 20,000 a year. For businesses without a foreign currency or convertible dirham account, the e-commerce cap rises from MAD 500,000 to MAD 1 million. The annual travel allowance stays at MAD 100,000, plus an additional allowance linked to income tax paid. These allowances apply to Moroccan residents, not to foreign merchants. But they do cap those merchants’ addressable market, since they set how much a Moroccan customer can spend online with a supplier based outside the country.
Buna is the only cross-border rail in the region actually live on the Arab side. Launched in 2020, this pan-Arab platform provides multicurrency clearing and settlement. It is operated by the Arab Regional Payments Clearing and Settlement Organization (ARPCSO), a subsidiary of the Arab Monetary Fund. It handles interbank flows, not retail payments, so it sits outside the merchant payment chain. It does, however, change how banks in the region settle with one another, since they can do so in several currencies on a single platform.
- Who to know: Bank Al-Maghrib, the Office des Changes, CMI, HPS, and GSIMT in Morocco; the Banque d’Algérie, SATIM, GIE Monétique, and Algérie Poste in Algeria; the Banque Centrale de Tunisie, Société Monétique Tunisie, and La Poste Tunisienne in Tunisia; the Central Bank of Egypt, the Egyptian Banks Company, Fawry, and the licensed PSPs in Egypt.
- What breaks most often: getting the money out, never the technical integration.
- What costs money: cash on delivery, through its return rate and DSO, not the card fee, which in Morocco is now the most tightly regulated in the region.
- On the 2026 calendar: Morocco’s timetable (transfer of CMI’s merchant portfolios in January and then April 2026, interchange at 0.50% in October 2026) and the ramp-up of Egypt’s PSO/PSP framework.
- What not to assume: that an international scheme is enough. In Algeria it is useless for domestic payments; in Egypt it misses the Meeza base; in Morocco and Tunisia it competes with local rails that customers use more.