Algeria celebrates its first card payment!!!

“The operation was successful,” said an Algerian official in a supermarket in Algiers in front of an applauding crowd and state media. One would think that the comment came after the launch of a skyrocket. It was rather a celebration of Algeria’s first card payment.

State media and local officials gathered around a liter of milk, the subject of the transaction, in what seems to be Algiers most advanced supermarket.

The late launch of car payments drew mockery from Algerian opposition figures who deplore the state of misery inflicted on the Algerian people as well as the underdeveloped banking system, in an oil and gas rich country.

As the world generalizes digital wallets and payment apps amid the rapid spread of digital currency payments and even biometric payments, Algeria is stuck in the past allowing a fringe of its people to finally use cards to pay their groceries.

The transaction came to represent an Algerian economy mired in anachronism and a state-dominated financial system that lacks competition and innovation.

The choice of the product – milk- is also telling. Social media is awash with Algerians standing in long queues to buy a liter of milk. The president himself has complained to US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in front of cameras about the country’s milk problem in 2022.

The underdeveloped banking system left most of the Algerian population struggling with access to cash in a country that was ranked as economically “repressed” in the 2025 Heritage Foundation Economic Freedom index.

The index ranks Algeria in the 160th position in the same category as the Central African Republic, Eritrea and North Korea.