Word came recently from the Governor of the Moroccan central bank, Abdellatif Jouahri, who considered himself “optimistic” about bringing mobile payments to the country. Jouahri noted that “the principle of interoperability has been accepted,” and apparently, this was enough for the central bank to consider bringing the system into play.
Further, with the Moroccan central bank seeming to give the nod to mobile payments, that was enough to get several other operations involved, including the National Telecommunications Regulatory Agency, several telecom service providers in the country, and even its principle bank. There’s no word on just what form the mobile payments platforms will take, whether it’s carrier billing, a connection to a bank account directly, or by using the intermediary of a digital wallet.
Back in 2016, Morocco started laying the groundwork to bring near-field communications (NFC)-based contactless payments to the country, as evidenced by a 2016 program involving car stickers. Mobile payments are known within Morocco’s banking system, as well as its telecom providers, but with the central bank leaning in that direction it does seem to open up some new potential opportunities.
The Moroccan market is pretty behind on this one, but any move to catch up is worth doing. There’s something to be said for the side of caution that it’s clearly erring on, but by like token, there’s taking caution too far. While the most secure room is the room no one can enter, there’s also no point in having it. What good is a room you can’t use, or a file so secure you can’t access it?
Morocco waited about as long as it could to roll out mobile payments, and while that’s not great news for mobile payments users out there, at least there’s a certain note of comfort to take in all this. Hopefully the market will be forgiving, and put its new platform to use as if it had been developed yesterday.
Source: https://paymentweek.com/2017-12-27-moroccans-take-note-mobile-payments-may-arrive-soon/