How does a Moroccan card payment work?
The shopper enters their card details on a hosted payment page. On the CMI e-commerce solution, that page can carry the merchant’s branding and is available in Arabic, French and English. If the card is enrolled in 3-D Secure, the cardholder confirms the payment with a code from their bank before the authorisation request goes out, and CMI strongly recommends 3-D Secure for every merchant. The acquirer sends the authorisation through the domestic switch to the issuing bank. Bank Al-Maghrib reports that the national card switch, SWAM, handled nearly 360 million card authorisations in 2025, up 24.4%, and approved 86.8% of them.
After approval, the merchant confirms the transaction from its merchant space to debit the customer. The same space supports full and partial refunds, cancellations and payment links sent by email, and returning customers can have their card saved for later purchases on the same site. Payments are in dirhams, and settlement follows the merchant’s acquiring agreement.
The acquiring side changed in 2026. CMI was founded in 2001 by nine banks and, according to the Competition Council, held more than 97% of card acquiring in 2024. Under commitments made binding by Decision 152/D/2024 of 31 October 2024, CMI stopped signing new merchants from 1 November 2024 and transferred its merchant contracts, including online payment contracts. La Vie éco reported that about 55,000 contracts moved by 31 January 2026 to seven bank-owned payment institutions, including Attijari Payment, M2T and Damane Cash, while Naps, Barid Cash and VPS already acquired independently. CMI is no longer an acquirer and now provides card processing to acquirers.
Why do Moroccan bank cards matter for merchants?
Card use is growing. Bank Al-Maghrib reports 23.44 million cards in issue at the end of 2025: 11.06 million Visa, 10.72 million Mastercard, 1.29 million co-badged CMI cards and 0.36 million private-label cards. E-commerce card payments grew 16% in number in 2025 to 44.8 million, worth MAD 12.1 billion, and made up 20% of all card payments by number and 17% by value. The central bank links that growth to online bill payment and e-government services.
Costs are coming down. Bank Al-Maghrib capped domestic interchange at 0.65% in October 2024 and, by Decision 265/W/2026, cut the cap to 0.50% from 1 October 2026, with a 0.15% ceiling for government payments and neighbourhood retail. Lower interchange gives acquirers room to cut merchant fees.
What can go wrong?
Authentication is the weak point. When Moroccan banks and acquirers moved to 3-D Secure 2.0 in 2022, Medias24 reported failure rates of up to 70% at peak times, and a missed or expired code ends the payment, so the shopper has to start again.
Cross-border limits catch foreign merchants. A merchant charging Moroccan cards from abroad needs the shopper to hold an international card, and the Office des Changes caps each resident’s international e-commerce spending at MAD 20,000 per calendar year under the 2026 foreign exchange instruction, up from MAD 15,000. A shopper who has used up the allowance can be declined.
The acquirer change adds operational risk. Merchants whose contracts moved from CMI should check which acquirer now holds them, how settlement reports arrive, and who handles disputes. Chargebacks follow Visa and Mastercard rules, so delivery records matter.
How would Omno handle Moroccan bank cards?
With several acquirers now in the market, a merchant would connect to Omno once and set routing rules per acquirer, currency and customer group. BIN rules could send cards from a given issuer to the acquirer the merchant chooses. If that acquirer were unavailable or rejected the request, the payment would move to the next acquirer in the rule until one accepts. The 3-D Secure result and final status would reach the merchant by webhook, which is the source of truth for releasing an order, and the routing-decision log would record which acquirer handled each payment.