Other investors in the round include Verod-Kepple, Global Founders Capital, Plug and Play, Endeavor Catalyst, Pincus Capital, Al Khwarizmi Ventures, UM6P Ventures, Axian Group, Uncovered Fund, AfriMobility, P1 Ventures, Reflect Ventures, Dragon Capital, MyAsia VC, the Harambean Prosperity Fund, and H&S Invest Holding.

In a landmark development for Morocco’s startup sector, Chari also became the first venture-backed startup in the country to obtain a payment institution licence from Bank Al-Maghrib, the nation’s central bank.

This regulatory approval empowers Chari to expand beyond its existing e-commerce and logistics operations into a full range of financial services for merchants.

Under this licence, Chari can now offer its merchant partners — including grocery shops, independent retailers, and small and medium enterprises — a broad suite of financial services.

These include acquiring services through POS terminals and payment gateways, issuing payment accounts, Moroccan IBANs, and debit cards, handling domestic money transfers and international remittances, enabling bill payments and e-government services, and distributing micro-insurance products.

With these capabilities in place, Chari aims to morph its existing e-commerce platform into a “merchant super app.”

Through this single app, Moroccan shopkeepers will be able to source FMCG products, accept digital payments, monitor account balances, pay suppliers, transfer funds, and even settle bills on behalf of their customers.

“This presents a rare chance to turn conventional grocery stores into local financial services hubs,” said Sophia Alj, Chari co-founder.

“Shopkeepers will be able to digitise their cash flows, boost their revenue streams, and better compete with modern retail chains.”

Her husband and co-founder, Ismael Belkhayat, who now serves as CEO, explained that over the past three years, Chari has built the full technology stack necessary to operate under its financial licence.

“Now that those rails are fully functional and supporting Chari’s use cases, we are opening them up to external partners,” he said, marking this move as the starting point for Chari’s Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) offering.

The new funding round and licence acquisition come at a time when Chari is pushing to deepen its footprint in Morocco’s largely cash-driven retail space.

Before this new round, Chari had already made strides in fintech integration, and it recently struck a strategic partnership with Visa aimed at accelerating financial inclusivity and digital payments adoption in the Moroccan market.