Morocco’s central bank has signaled that it is not ready to open its market to Revolut, the British digital bank, even as the prospect of the fintech’s arrival is already reshaping how the country’s lenders compete.
Speaking at a press conference following the quarterly board meeting of Bank Al-Maghrib (Morocco’s central bank), Governor Abdellatif Jouahri said the London-based firm had not yet filed a formal application for a banking license or an authorization to operate in the country, and that contacts so far had not gone beyond preliminary discussions. Jouahri said the bank could not respond favorably at this stage, telling representatives to come back in a few years. Barlaman Today
Jouahri stressed that any foreign financial player entering the Moroccan market is bound by the same regulatory framework as everyone else, and that the central bank’s priorities, before authorizing any activity, are meeting licensing conditions, protecting customers, and safeguarding the stability of the financial system.
For context, Revolut is one of the world’s most valuable fintechs, a “neobank” that operates entirely through a smartphone app, offering multi-currency accounts, fee-free international transfers, card payments, budgeting tools, trading, and cryptocurrency services. The company reported revenue of roughly $5.8 billion for 2025, up 46% year on year, and serves close to 70 million customers worldwide. Its interest in Morocco, where it has been building a local team since 2025, reflects a wider push into the Middle East and Africa. The Paypers
“A calculated delay, not a rejection”
Idriss El Fina, an expert in geopolitical economics, told Hespress that the central bank’s message should not be read as a ban. What Jouahri described, he argued, was that the timing is wrong rather than the door permanently closed. Since Revolut had not actually submitted any formal request for banking accreditation and the contact amounted to an exploratory meeting, El Fina said, the right way to frame it is a calculated delay rather than a refusal, a distinction he warned should not get lost in public debate.
He described the central bank’s caution as a responsible and understandable position given three national priorities currently occupying it. The first is an ongoing negotiation with European partners over the framework governing remittances sent home by Moroccans living abroad, a politically and economically sensitive file given how much those transfers matter to the Moroccan economy. The second is an end-of-year assessment by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank of the resilience of the country’s financial system. The third is an upcoming review by the Financial Action Task Force, the global watchdog known by its French acronym GAFI, of Morocco’s record on combating money laundering and terrorist financing. With files this delicate in play, El Fina said, it would be unwise to rush open something of this magnitude.
Revolut’s entry, he added, would not amount to an earthquake for the system as a whole. Morocco’s banking sector is highly protected, heavily concentrated, and shielded by a regulatory wall that has stayed strict for more than a decade. (By way of background, the country’s five largest banks control roughly three-quarters of its banking assets, loans, and deposits, and no new foreign banking license has been issued in over ten years.) When its time comes, though, El Fina said, Revolut would apply real and selective competitive pressure on the most profitable segments of the business: migrant remittances and digital payments.
In his view, Revolut’s most important positive effect has already materialized before it has even arrived. The mere possibility of its entry pushed Moroccan banks to get ahead of the competition by rolling out their own local digital products. The real stake, he argued, is not protecting banks from competition but ensuring they convert that pressure into a genuine modernization of services for Moroccan customers. Waiting today is legitimate, he concluded, provided it is a delay spent preparing rather than one that becomes permanent postponement; managed openness, when conditions are ripe, serves both consumers and the national economy.
A sovereign matter
El Mehdi El Faqir, a financial and economic analyst, framed banking authorization as a quintessentially sovereign domain in any country, meaning the entry of any foreign operator or investor is subject to careful scrutiny on principle and cannot be treated without strict conditions.
He noted that many foreign banks have over the years exited Morocco and been replaced by domestic capital, a shift he said cannot easily be reversed by letting new players in without regulation; reorganizing the banking system, in his words, gives priority to national capital first.
On models such as bitcoin and digital banking more broadly, El Faqir said any move toward legalization would have to come from Morocco’s legislature and would first require updating the existing legal framework, since these are not ordinary banks but a new generation of digital institutions known as neobanks. He argued the Moroccan banking landscape already accommodates this new generation, pointing to Attijariwafa Bank, one of the country’s largest lenders, which recently launched a service called Simple offering a model comparable to Revolut’s. (Attijariwafa introduced Simple in May 2026, billing it as Morocco’s first fully digital bank, in a move widely read as positioning the group ahead of incoming international fintechs.) That, El Faqir said, shows the national system is capable of keeping pace with digital change from within.
A foreign player, he stressed, cannot simply walk in. Once an application reaches Bank Al-Maghrib, the central bank retains full discretion to accept or reject it, and were it to deny Revolut a license, that would be for sound reasons aimed at preventing disruption or an oversupply in the banking market. The central bank, he concluded, is the supervisor best placed to judge the national priorities involved in protecting the sector.
