E-commerce in Morocco

E-commerce, or electronic commerce, is distance selling over the internet: you choose a product on a merchant site, you order it, you pay for it — online or on receipt — and it is delivered to the address of your choice or handed over in a shop.

The contract is formed the moment you confirm the order, not on delivery. In Morocco, Law No. 53-05 on the electronic exchange of legal data gives an electronic document the same value as a paper one: the confirmation received by e-mail, the order form and the invoice are all evidence. Keep them.

How an order works, step by step

1. You choose — specifications, availability, price incl. VAT and delivery charge must be readable before you buy, not at the moment you pay.
2. You confirm the basket — address, delivery method, payment method. The total payable appears before you confirm.
3. You pay — by card through an approved banking platform, by bank transfer, or on delivery when the merchant offers it.
4. The merchant prepares and ships — you receive an order confirmation, then the means to track the parcel.
5. You receive and you check — inspect the condition of the parcel and the conformity of the product on receipt, before signing the delivery note. Any damage or non-conformity must be reported to the merchant within 48 hours.

That is exactly how an order works on iris.ma, from the basket to the delivery method you choose.

Online commerce in Morocco did not start yesterday, but it has changed scale. Paying by bank card over the internet has been authorised since November 2007, after the banks put a secure payment platform in place; the first of them, Maroc Télécommerce, was created in 2001 and has since been absorbed by the Centre Monétique Interbancaire (CMI).

One Moroccan buyer in four

According to the ANRT ICT survey 2024-2025, 24.9% of individuals aged 5 and over bought or ordered online in 2024, against 15.1% in 2019: 3.7 million more online buyers in five years. They also order more often: 76.3% of them place two to five orders a year, against 51.5% in 2019, while the share of those who ordered only once has fallen from 34.3% to 8.1%.

Source: ANRT, ICT survey 2024-2025 (individuals aged 5 and over). Several answers were possible for payment methods.

What online payments add up to

On the banking side, the annual Bank Al-Maghrib report on payment methods records 38.5 million online card payments for 2024, up 20% in a year, worth 11 billion dirhams (+11%) — an average of around 285 DH per transaction. Across all channels, card in hand as well as online, card payments reached 192.5 million transactions worth 63 billion dirhams.

Those amounts tell only part of the story: they count only what is paid by card. Adding cash on delivery, which is still the majority, the Ministry of Industry and Trade puts the Moroccan online commerce market at around 22 billion dirhams. The CMI, for its part, estimated card activity at the end of 2025 at more than 240 million transactions worth close to 100 billion dirhams collected by Moroccan merchants.

What Moroccans buy online

Clothing comes first by a wide margin (71.3% of online buyers), followed by bill payment (48.4%) and food (35.4%). Computer equipment and parts are ordered online by 23.6% of buyers — against 20.8% in 2020 — neck and neck with video games (23.9%), ahead of software (13.8%) and photography gear (7.9%). That is precisely iris.ma's ground.

The technical groundwork is in place: 89.2% of Moroccan households have an internet connection and 91.2% of individuals aged 5 and over use it, against 74.4% in 2019. Growth in online commerce no longer comes from equipment, but from trust.

Buying online does not replace the shop: the two do not serve the same need. Here is what each one does better than the other.

What buying online brings

• A choice with no shelf limit — a website displays thousands of references where a shop shows only what fits on its shelves. In a market such as computing, that is the difference between three models and a whole range.
• Something to compare before buying — detailed specifications, filters, reviews, datasheets: you decide on written evidence, not on what a sales assistant happens to remember.
• Often lower prices — a website carries fewer overheads than a chain of shops, and part of that gap shows up on the price tag.
• Delivery anywhere — you reach the same catalogue from a small town as from Casablanca. That is the real contribution of online commerce in a country where specialist supply remains concentrated in a few cities.
• A written trail — order, confirmation, invoice: everything is dated and kept, which counts on the day a warranty has to be claimed.

What has to be accepted in exchange

• You do not handle the product before buying it — hence the importance of precise specifications, real photographs and stated dimensions.
• You have to wait — preparation time and then carriage time are added to the purchase. Store pickup removes part of it.
• A return is a procedure — possible, and framed by law, but less immediate than an exchange over the counter.
• Not all websites are equal — this is the point that decides everything else, and the subject of the two sections that follow.

When you pay by card on a Moroccan website, you do not enter your bank details at the merchant: the merchant redirects you to the page of an approved banking platform, which collects the card number, encrypts it and passes it to your bank. The merchant site never sees your card number; it receives only an authorisation, or a refusal.

For a long time this activity was carried out in Morocco by the CMI alone. Since 1^st May 2025, acquiring has been opened to approved payment institutions — ours is Attijari Payment — while the CMI remains the national technical platform they rely on. One practical consequence: a listing in the CMI directory is no longer the single marker it once was.

The four checks that are enough

1. The address starts with https:// on the payment page, and the domain name shown really is that of a bank or a payment institution, not an approximate address.
2. Your bank authenticates you — a code by SMS or a confirmation in its app. A payment that goes through without any confirmation from your bank should put you on alert.
3. The amount displayed is exactly the amount of your order, in the expected currency, before you confirm.
4. The website identifies itself — company name, address and registration numbers in its legal notice. A technically safe payment made to an untraceable merchant protects you from nothing.

One last useful point: some Moroccan websites accept only cards issued in Morocco. If you are paying from abroad with a foreign card, check this before filling your basket. What we accept is set out on our payment page.

This is the particularity of the Moroccan market: 84.1% of online buyers pay cash on delivery, a share that has even risen since 2019 (79.2%) while card payment was also progressing, from 34.2% to 43.3%. Both rise together, because the same people often switch from one to the other depending on the amount and on the merchant.

Why it holds. It removes the only real barrier at the entrance: you pay only once the parcel is in front of you. It requires neither a card nor a bank account, and it suits anyone buying for the first time on a site they do not yet know.

What it costs in practice. You must have the amount in cash at the time of delivery, it does not exempt you from checking the parcel on receipt, it is usually capped by the merchant, and it does not apply to anything that is not shipped — a software licence sent by e-mail, for instance.

On iris.ma, cash on delivery is offered within certain amount limits, alongside bank card, bank transfer, certified cheque and cash deposit at a bank branch: the detail is on the payment methods page.

Distance selling is governed by Law No. 31-08 laying down consumer protection measures. It applies to any merchant selling in Morocco, and it gives you four concrete guarantees.

• Being informed before buying — the identity of the seller, the characteristics of the product, the price including all taxes, the delivery charge and the lead time must be brought to your knowledge before the order.
• Receiving a written confirmation — on a durable medium, at the latest on delivery: it states the address to which a complaint may be sent, how to exercise the right of withdrawal, the after-sales service and the commercial warranties.
• Withdrawing within 7 days — seven clear days from receipt of the goods, without having to give a reason. The seller must then refund you within 15 days at the latest of that right being exercised. Withdrawal assumes that the product comes back in its original packaging, complete, never unpacked or used, and the outward and return carriage costs remain payable by the buyer — the detail is in our returns policy.
• Being delivered within a maximum of 30 days from the confirmation of your order.

Two further texts complete the picture: Law No. 53-05, which gives legal value to the electronic document, and Law No. 09-08 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data, overseen by the CNDP. A merchant site must declare its processing operations and let you access your data, correct it and object to its use.

Our own conditions — time limits, return costs, products concerned — are set out in our returns policy and in our terms and conditions of sale; how we handle your data is explained on the personal data page.

The safety of an online purchase rests less on payment technology than on the identity of the seller. These checks take a few minutes and rule out most unpleasant surprises.

• A complete legal notice — company name, legal form, physical address, trade register and ICE number. An e-mail address alone is not an identity.
• Readable terms and conditions of sale, stating what happens in the event of a delay, a non-conforming product or a return.
• Prices incl. VAT and delivery charges announced before payment, not discovered on the last screen.
• A reachable customer service — a number that answers, published opening hours, a written channel that leaves a trace.
• An explicit returns policy, with a time limit and a procedure, rather than a vague formula.
• A payment redirected to an approved banking platform, over HTTPS, with authentication by your bank.
• A real address, and ideally a shop or a pickup point: a company you can go and see commits far more than a website.
• Precise product pages — references, warranties, full specifications. A vague catalogue is rarely the sign of serious stock.

On iris.ma, our full identity appears in the legal notice, and our two addresses — the Casablanca shop and the Témara pickup point — on the store locations page.

iris.ma is one of the pioneers of Moroccan online commerce. The site is among the first merchant sites in the country to have offered payment by bank card, and among the first customers of Maroc Télécommerce, the first Moroccan online payment platform, and then of the CMI. At the time, paying by card over the internet in Morocco was still a novelty that very few merchants offered.

Opened in 2011 by SGM2I, a company founded in 2007, iris.ma sells computer and electronic equipment to Moroccan consumers, businesses and public bodies: laptops and desktop PCs, monitors, printers and consumables, networking, storage, telephony, photography, image and sound.

What we commit to

• Delivery everywhere in Morocco, Monday to Saturday, at the same rate whatever the city — or free store pickup in Casablanca and Témara.
• Several ways to pay: bank card through Attijari Payment, bank transfer, cash on delivery, certified cheque and cash deposit at a bank branch.
• A proper invoice, with an ICE number, and a quotation within 24 working hours for equipment projects.
• A reachable customer service, before as well as after the sale, and a written returns policy.

The rest of our story, our teams and our figures are on the about us page.