Card payments in Morocco: from authorisation to money in the bank

The customer paid 1,000 dirhams yesterday. Your account shows 987 the day after tomorrow. Nothing vanished — these are three different operations.

By BelloCommerce

September 8, 2026

A customer pays 1,000 dirhams by card on Monday. The terminal receipt says 1,000. The bank statement says 987, and it says it on Wednesday. This is neither an error nor theft: a card payment is not one event but a chain of three distinct operations, separated in time and charged along the way. For as long as you treat it as a single gesture, your till and your bank will never agree.

Card terminal and bank statement on a shop counter.

The essentials in five points

Authorisation moves no money at all: it reserves the amount on the customer’s account, and nothing more.
Capture is what actually triggers the payment, usually in the evening when the terminal closes its day.
Settlement groups the whole day into a single transfer, which is why your statement shows no line per sale.
The amount credited is net of the acquiring commission, deducted along the way rather than invoiced separately.
The lag is counted in working days: takings from a Saturday reach the bank after the weekend.

1. Three operations, not one

What the merchant experiences as “the customer paid” breaks down technically into stages that share neither the same moment nor the same effect. Confusing them causes almost every till discrepancy that arises on card takings.

Authorisation: The terminal queries the customer’s bank, which checks the balance and the limit, then blocks the amount. No funds move. An authorisation can expire without ever becoming a payment.
Capture: The merchant confirms the operation, generally automatically when the terminal closes for the day. This stage turns a reservation into a real receivable.
Settlement: The captures for the period are sent as a batch to the acquirer, which clears them and triggers the transfer to your account.
The credit: Your bank records the transfer, net of commission, at a value date that is not necessarily the day of the operation.

2. Why the amount credited is not the amount taken

The acquiring commission does not appear as an invoice you settle: it is withheld from the transfer. You take 1,000 and you receive 1,000 less the commission. That commission has several components, among them the interchange fees passed to the cardholder’s bank.

Bank Al-Maghrib caps this component: the ceiling on domestic card interchange falls from 0.65% to 0.50% excluding tax on 1 October 2026, with a specific 0.15% cap for proximity merchants and online public services. Interchange is only part of what you pay, however: the rest remunerates your own acquirer.

One point is not negotiable: the commission is the merchant’s cost and cannot be passed on to the customer. Charging a surcharge for card payment, or setting a minimum purchase before you accept one, breaches that rule.

3. Reconciling till and bank without losing the morning

Reconciliation almost always fails for the same reason: people compare a list of sales with a list of transfers, when settlement has already bundled the former inside the latter. The method is to reconcile by batch, not by sale.

Take the day’s card total from your till, not from the terminal’s own end-of-day slip alone.
Print or download the terminal’s settlement advice for the same day: this is the document that bridges the two.
Check that the advice total equals the till’s card total; a gap here is a till problem, not a bank problem.
Find the matching transfer on the statement, allowing for the lag in working days.
Verify that the difference between the advice and the transfer really matches the commission stated in your contract.

If the difference does not match your contractual rate, you have a concrete reason to talk to your acquirer — and a figure to put behind it, which changes everything in that kind of conversation.

The commission cannot be passed to the customer

Adding a fee for card payment, or refusing cards below a set amount, exposes you to sanction: Bank Al-Maghrib states explicitly that the acquiring commission remains the merchant’s cost. If the rate weighs on you, the answer is to renegotiate it, not to transfer it to the customer.

4. What BelloPOS records, and what it does not

BelloPOS records the sale and its payment method at the moment of collection: the amount, the card as the means of payment, and the matching receipt. That is the reference figure against which you will reconcile the terminal’s settlement advice.

What it does not do is equally important: BelloPOS does not connect to the card terminal and receives nothing from your bank. The software knows neither the commission deducted nor the transfer date; both come from the advice and the statement. Reconciliation stays a human task, but it then works on three clear documents instead of a general impression.

BelloPOS

All the features

Mistakes to avoid

Comparing sale by sale with the statement — The statement shows settlements, not sales. Reconcile batch by batch, starting from the terminal’s advice.
Treating an authorisation as a payment — An authorisation can expire without capture. Until capture has happened, you have not been paid.
Forgetting working days — Takings from Friday evening or Saturday will not arrive before the start of the following week. That is not a delay, it is the normal cycle.
Never reading your real rate — Many merchants know their contractual rate but have never checked the one actually applied. The calculation takes five minutes a month.

Frequently asked questions

Why does my weekly transfer match no single day?

Because your contract provides for weekly rather than daily settlement. The transfer then bundles several days; you have to add up the advices for the period to find the amount.

Can a blocked authorisation be cancelled?

Yes. If capture never happens, the reservation lapses on its own after a few days and the customer recovers their limit. The delay depends on the cardholder’s bank, not on you.

Can I set a ten-dirham minimum for accepting cards?

No. Conditioning card acceptance on a minimum amount is an indirect way of passing on the commission, which the regulation forbids.

Is the commission deductible?

Yes, it is an ordinary operating cost, recorded under banking services. It has to be booked at its real amount, which means knowing what that amount is.

What to take away

A card payment reads in three movements: authorisation reserves, capture commits, settlement pays. The amount credited is net of commission and arrives in working days. Always reconcile by settlement advice rather than sale by sale, and check once a month that the commission actually deducted matches your contract.