Morocco Launches National Check Verification System to Boost Business Confidence

The Centralized Irregular Checks Service (SCCI) is primarily aimed at preserving check users and enabling merchants and businesses to ensure the regularity of checks presented for the settlement of transactions. During a press briefing held in this context by videoconference, the head of the network and presence department at BAM, Khalid Zbir, indicated that a check becomes irregular when it is referenced to an account that has undergone the closure of unavailability or produced by persons prohibited from issuing checks or counterfeit, fraudulent or stolen checks.

After some steps taken in 2015, "Bank Al-Maghrib triggered the process of setting up a delegation to manage this service. This phase was launched with the publication of an international call for tenders and resulted in the award of this new service to the ’Créditinfo’ group after the creation of the subsidiary ’Checkinfo’, a Moroccan company that will be responsible for promoting this service. A contractual framework was finalized in 2018." Already in September 2019, Checkinfo has started implementing its investment program. "The work on this project, which integrates the entire marketplace, resulted, by the end of 2020, in the implementation of the technical platform for the centralization of the underlying data for this new service and the deployment of the necessary devices for its management and marketing," he added.

As for Sidimohamed Abouchikhi, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Checkinfo, the BAM’s delegate for the management of the SCCI, he affirmed that the company ensures the instant regularity of the check and greatly reduces the risk of non-payment. In addition, the company is focusing on the data collected daily at the banks in order to prevent events that may occur during the life of the check. With this information, the company has developed services accessible to users online from the delegatee’s website checkinfo.ma or a Checkinfo mobile application for the regularity of checks. In addition, a Customer Relationship Center to be reached at 0 802 000 033 is available to answer users’ questions.