This review of interchange allows acquirers to make significant reductions in the pricing applied to merchants, which will stimulate the development of electronic payment by card.
Referral: Morocco’s Competition Council will monitor the impact of capping domestic electronic payment interchange fees on commissions applied to merchants.
The Competition Council will monitor the impact of the capping of domestic electronic payment interchange fees on the levels of acquisition commissions and its impact on the competitive functioning of markets and consumer well-being. In a press release on the progress of the referral from the company NAPS SA concerning the practices implemented by the Interbank Electronic Payment Center (CMI) in the electronic card payment market, the Council indicated that this revision of interchange allows acquirers to make significant reductions in the pricing applied to merchants, which will stimulate the development of electronic payment by card. In a press release on the progress of the referral from the company NAPS SA concerning the practices implemented by the Interbank Electronic Payment Center (CMI) in the electronic card payment market, the Council underlines that the reduction in fees interchange does not only aim to reduce costs for merchants, but also to preserve, for buyers competing with the CMI, a reasonable commercial margin, thus responding to another competition concern noted during the examination of the file.
The Competition Council also specified that the commitments proposed by the CMI and the nine shareholder banks of the latter, as published by the interim general rapporteur, dated September 27, 2024, in accordance with the provisions of the paragraph 6 of article 26 of decree no. 2-14-652 taken for the application of law 104-12 relating to freedom of prices and competition as modified and supplemented, includes a tariff component linked to compliance by the Center and its shareholder banks with the interchange ceiling, now set by Bank Al-Maghrib.
“Indeed, in accordance with good international practices in this area, the Competition Council recommended that Bank Al-Maghrib cap the interchange rate since the terms of its setting by the CMI and its shareholder banks constitute a concern for competition identified as part of the preliminary assessment report,” the press release noted. Following discussions between the Competition Council and Bank Al-Maghrib, the latter issued its regulatory decision n°244/W/2024 dated September 20, 2024, relating to domestic electronic payment interchange fees, by which it set the ceiling of these fees at 0.65% of the value of the transaction from October 1, 2024.
In this context, the CMI and its shareholder banks have committed to the Competition Council not to apply an interchange commission per transaction of an amount greater than the aforementioned ceiling. The Competition Council recalls that despite the opening of the market to competition through the separation of the acquisition activity from that of switching in 2015, the interchange rate has seen successive increases carried out by the CMI and its shareholders between 2012 and 2019.
