Taking cash without a till — payment by reference
In Morocco, a large share of purchases is paid in cash. Here is how to collect that cash without handling a single dirham.
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 offers it: your customer pays in cash, at an agency of the Chari network, and the money lands in your account like any other payment.
How it works, from the customer's side
- 1You create a payment link, choosing the cash method.
- 2The customer receives a reference — a string of digits, nothing else to remember.
- 3They go to an agency in the partner network, hand over the reference and the cash.
- 4Your account is credited the instant the deposit is made, and your system is notified.
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 electronic money is what reaches you.
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
Give the reference a lifetime. Expiry is optional — but for an agency payment, set one: a customer who waits three weeks before going to an agency should find an expired reference, not an order still waiting. Plan a reminder, 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.
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.
- Services billed on a schedule — tuition, subscriptions, dues — for an audience that traditionally pays over the counter.
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.
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, cleanly refundable if the sale falls through.
What about the API?
It is the same endpoint as for a card link: 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. The payment webhook fires once the agency has the cash.
In other words: if you have already integrated payment links, you have already integrated cash collection.
Written by ChariPay team.