Contactless Payments Surge in Morocco Amid COVID-19 Pandemic

The figures from the Interbank Monetary Center (CMI) showing an increase in the rate of contactless transactions from 4.3% last January to 17.9% in September 2020 illustrate well the blossoming of contactless payment, reports Panorapost.

Thus, the use of "contactless payment is far from being a passing trend," said Ismaïl Bellali, Deputy Managing Director of the CMI. "We will follow the trend observed in other countries, particularly in the West, where contactless payment exceeds 50% of transactions," he stressed.

Amal Alaoui, Deputy Managing Director of NAPS, a subsidiary of the M2M group specialized in electronic payment services, estimates that "on the Issuing activity, our payment cards issued both in our branch network, on our digital channels and as part of our B2B programs, are contactless cards." Ms. Alaoui is pleased with a network that now has 2,300 merchants with a 100% contactless fleet connecting nearly 4,000 POS terminals that accept payments with and without contact.

Highlighting the many advantages of the contactless payment card, and the 24/7 fraud monitoring service put in place by banks for all types of cards, Nasr-Eddine Belghiti, CEO and founder of IPRC, specialized in ATM remote management, said that "the Moroccan banking community has suffered from systemic fraud attacks that could have caused considerable financial damage, if they had not been detected and contained by the vigilance of this continuous monitoring."