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Chari

“Can Chari's Bank Al-Maghrib payment institution license and proprietary BaaS stack become the financial infrastructure layer for both Moroccan consumers/retailers and third-party fintechs across Francophone Africa?”

Founded2018
HQCasablanca (Bouskoura), Morocco
Total raised$8.8M
Latest roundSeries A
Valuation$100M (bridge round, January 2022)
IndustryFintech / SMB banking
The story

Founded in 2018 as a B2B FMCG ordering app for small Moroccan retailers, Chari secured its Bank Al-Maghrib payment institution license and layered embedded financial services onto its commerce platform — starting with payments (Chari Pay), then micro-insurance and BNPL for retailers. By 2023–2024 the company had pivoted toward becoming a full financial infrastructure play: chari.ma relaunched as a consumer/merchant e-wallet super app, while ChariBaaS (baas.ma) offers white-label BaaS APIs — wallets, Visa card issuing, KYC/KYB, agent CICO — to fintechs, banks, and corporates across Francophone Africa. The strategic bet is that Chari's regulated payment institution license and proprietary card management system (with a Visa Associate License sponsored by Bank of Africa) can underpin both its own super app and a B2B infrastructure business.

Last 12 months
2024
2024
Product timeline
2018
Chari founded as a B2B e-commerce mobile app for FMCG ordering by small retailers in Morocco.· pivot
2021
Accepted into Y Combinator (S21 batch); raised $5M seed round; acquired Moroccan ledger book app Karny.ma.· acquisition
2022
Raised bridge round at $100M valuation; announced plans to pilot BNPL services for retailers; expanded to Tunisia.· lending
2022
Obtained payment institution license from Bank Al-Maghrib; launched Chari Pay (online payment gateway).· banking
2023
Launched ChariBaaS (baas.ma) — a white-label API-first BaaS platform offering wallets, card issuing, KYC/KYB, and agent network to third parties.· banking
2024
Relaunched chari.ma as a consumer/merchant e-wallet super app offering Moroccan IBAN accounts, physical and virtual Visa cards, telecom recharges, bill payments, and QR merchant acceptance.· banking
Acquisitions
Karny.ma2021
Moroccan digital ledger book app acquired to deepen retailer financial management capabilities within the Chari platform.
Regulated entities
1
regulatory licence held by Chari
Licence types, jurisdictions and registered entities are in the Embedded Finance Index report.
The stack
6 layers disclosed in Chari’s embedded-finance stack
Payments / PSP
Chari Pay (self-operated)
Banking / BaaS
in the full report
Card issuing
in the full report
Card network
in the full report
Lending
in the full report
Sponsor bank
in the full report
Accounting gap: minor
7 more providers across 5 layers, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.