👉 Independent reporting on the MENA tech and startup ecosystem. Stories like this exist because subscribers fund them. Subscribe now.
Morocco's central bank has effectively paused any process for Revolut to enter the country's banking market, with Bank Al-Maghrib governor Abdellatif Jouahri saying the services the fintech offers are already available through Moroccan banks and financial institutions.
Speaking at a press conference after the central bank's second quarterly council meeting of 2026, Jouahri said he received Revolut's leadership in Rabat at the start of June, but told them the regulator had more urgent priorities.
He cited the bank's work on Morocco's financial and regulatory relationship with Europe, alongside two end-of-2026 evaluations, one by the World Bank and IMF, and another tied to international anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist-financing mechanisms. Those, he said, must be dealt with before the bank examines new applications from international players.
Jouahri clarified that Revolut has not formally submitted a banking-licence application; the June discussions were exploratory, intended to gauge the regulatory climate. He said Revolut's executives understood the timing and asked whether they could return later, to which he gave a non-committal response, indicating a revisit should be expected in a few years once domestic priorities are resolved.
Revolut said it remained committed to the Moroccan market. "We fully understand and respect the institution's current constraints given the multiple ongoing regulatory workstreams underway," said Yacine Faqir, general manager of Revolut Morocco, who added that the meeting allowed the company to set out the timeline needed to deploy an operation of its scale.
The cool reception follows more than a year of groundwork. The company, which Bloomberg reports is exploring a secondary share sale at a $115 billion valuation, began building toward a Morocco entry in 2025, assembling a local team and appointing Amine Berrada, a former Uber operations director for Southern and Eastern Europe, as Head of Strategy and Operations to lead its prospective Moroccan business from Casablanca, with the country positioned as a North African beachhead and a gateway to the wider continent.
Bank Al-Maghrib's caution is long-standing. No new foreign banking licence has been issued in Morocco in over a decade, a barrier that has previously frustrated other internationally minded fintechs including Kenya's M-PESA and Nigeria's Flutterwave.
Beyond the scheduling, Revolut would also run into Morocco's strict capital controls, enforced by the Office des Changes, which restrict residents' ability to move money out of the country and sit awkwardly with Revolut's core pitch of cheap, seamless cross-border transfers.
Any Moroccan version of the app would likely be a heavily localised product, strong on receiving international payments and domestic transactions but stripped of the frictionless outbound transfers that define it elsewhere.
The setback also lands against a backdrop of domestic momentum: in May, Attijariwafa Bank launched Simple, described as Morocco's first full-scale neobank.
It contrasts sharply with Revolut's progress elsewhere in the region, having completed its UAE licensing this month with Stored Value Facilities and Retail Payment Services licences from the Central Bank of the UAE.
Founded in 2015, Revolut serves around 75 million customers worldwide, has expanded into Mexico, and applied for a US banking charter.
👉 Independent reporting on the MENA tech and startup ecosystem. Stories like this exist because subscribers fund them. Subscribe now.
