Taking cash without a till — payment by reference

Moroccan commerce is still largely a cash business. An online shop that only accepts cards cuts itself off from a significant share of its customers — not by the customer's choice, but because they have no card, or would rather not use it online.

Payment by reference answers exactly that — and ChariPay is the only payment gateway in Morocco that also collects cash at agencies: your customer pays in cash, at a Damane Cash, Chaabi Cash, Tasshilat, Barid Cash or Chari agency, and the money lands in your account like any other payment.

How it works, from the customer's side

1. 1You create a payment link, choosing the cash method.
2. 2The customer receives a reference — a string of digits, nothing else to remember.
3. 3They go to an agency in the partner network, hand over the reference and the cash.
4. 4Your account is credited the instant the deposit is made, the link turns "Paid" and you are notified in the portal.

No card, no account to open, no app to install. For a customer who has never paid online, that is the entire learning curve.

What it changes for you

You handle no cash. You open no till, you count no float, you make no bank deposit. The cash enters the agency network, and what reaches you is a credit on your payment account.

And above all, the payment is traceable end to end: the reference, the agency, the timestamp and the amount are all recorded. A cash sale becomes a line in your accounts like any other.

Three things to know before offering it

A cash link has no expiry. Cash payment at an agency always relies on a single-use payment link — one reference per deposit — and, in the portal, turning on "Agency payment" on a link disables its expiry: the link stays payable with no time limit. Plan a reminder for a customer who takes their time, cancel the link if the order no longer stands — a canceled link can no longer be paid — and do not prepare the order before the money is in.

The customer pays when they visit the agency. Hours or days can pass between creating the reference and the deposit: your order funnel must accept that pending state — that is a fundamental difference from cards. From the moment of the deposit, however, the money is immediately available in your account. A permanent counter poster or QR code, for its part, only takes cards: see QR code payments.

The deposited amount may differ. An agency collects what it is handed. If the customer deposits an amount different from the reference, the gap must be visible on your side. That is exactly what the supervision screens show.

Who it is decisive for

• Remote selling to cities where cards are little used.
• Cash on delivery that you want to stop: rather than having your couriers carry cash, have the customer pay at an agency before shipping. The guide to e-commerce payments in Morocco compares the two options. The step-by-step way to reduce it is in alternatives to cash on delivery.
• Services billed on a schedule — tuition, subscriptions, dues — for an audience that traditionally pays over the counter. The school case is covered in school fees online.

Reconciling cash, without a till

The classic objection to cash is not the cash — it is its bookkeeping. A physical till imposes counting, a day-book, unexplained differences, and having to trust every person who opens it.

Reference payments move all of that outside your walls. The cash is deposited at an agency, with a partner network whose job this is; what reaches your system is a record: reference, amount, date, status. Your "till" becomes a list of transactions in the portal, exportable like any card payment — and your reconciliation treats cash exactly like everything else, in the same file, with the same references.

That is also what makes the process auditable: every deposit has a timestamped trace with a third party, not a handwritten slip in a drawer.

Three situations where the reference changes everything

Cash on delivery, without the cash handling. The courier no longer carries the day's money: the customer deposits against the reference before delivery, or the courier deposits the day's reference — either way, the amount enters the system at deposit time, not when someone gets back to the warehouse. For a restaurant that delivers, the same idea — payment before preparation — is covered in online payments for restaurants.

The customer without a bank card. A real share of Moroccan customers pays for everything in cash. The reference opens remote purchasing to them — order by phone, pay at the corner agency — without demanding a bank relationship they do not have.

The large deposit. A several-thousand-dirham down payment in cash at the counter creates a security and paperwork problem. Deposited at an agency against a reference, it creates an entry — dated, traced, tied to the sale.

What about the API?

It is the same endpoint as for a card link, described in the payment links API reference: you simply choose the payment method. The deposit reference and the deposit entity are not in the creation response yet: they are generated the first time the payment page opens — let it present them to the customer, or re-read the link afterwards. As soon as the network confirms the deposit, the link turns "Paid" and you are notified in the portal; on the server side, read the link's state with GET /v1/payment-links/{reference}.

In other words: if you have already integrated payment links, cash collection goes through the same endpoints.

Next step

To see the journey as your customer will live it, open a test account: Start in test mode asks for a name, a work email and your company name, then a password chosen from the activation link sent by email. You then create your test key and your first payment links from the portal — free, with no time limit; company verification only comes in when you go live. The guide to online payments in Morocco places cash at an agency among the other ways to get paid.