Greenback Initiative Morocco: Central Bank, World Bank pool efforts to improve access to financial services

Morocco’s central bank, Bank Al-Maghrib, and the World Bank announced on Tuesday the launch of the City-Tour concept, an innovative training-action to improve access to financial services.

The City-Tour concept, launched in the framework of the Greenback Initiative Morocco, consists in organizing guided tours to financial services agencies for the benefit of potential users, supervised by coach-trainers and delegates of partner associations, a press release of the Central Bank and the World Bank said.

City-Tour targets mainly women, youth and micro-entrepreneurs in urban, peri-urban and peri-rural areas.

This experience enables participants to understand the different options available for sending and receiving funds, including their characteristics (access requirements, timeframe, etc.), know the different pricing components of these options and gain the confidence to choose the option that best suits their needs, the release added.

Organized with the support of the Moroccan Foundation for Financial Education, the City-Tour pilot experiences were successfully conducted between October and November 2021 in Casablanca and Settat for the benefit of some 40 participants.

The initiative in Casablanca was carried out in partnership with the association “Espace point de Départ pour la promotion de l’entreprise féminine” (ESPOD) while the one in Settat was backed by the National Agency for the Fight against Illiteracy (ANLCA).

The feedback from participants to the first City-Tours showed that this initiative enabled the people involved to better compare the available options to send or receive a money transfer, and to choose the most suitable financial service to their needs.

Thanks to this experience, participants, especially women, say they feel more at ease and more autonomous in financial agencies, according to the press release.

The Greenback Morocco initiative is preparing, in partnership with ANLCA, to expand this experience to several cities in the Kingdom.

In fact, a City-Tour was conducted in Salé this March 1 to instruct the trainers. Three other similar experiences, as well as a training for the trainers involved in this initiative are planned, during the current month in Casablanca, Tangier and Marrakech.

On the occasion of the International Women’s Day, a City-tour dedicated mainly to women was organized in Casablanca on March 8.

Designed by the World Bank in 2011 to ensure the monitoring of the G20’s 5×5 Objective and the Target 10.c of the Sustainable Development Goals, the Greenback initiative aims to increase the efficiency of the remittance market and, as a result, reduce its cost, while accelerating the adoption of digital financial services.

It promotes an innovative approach based on customers’ needs and stakeholders’ collaboration.