What GITEX says about the future of Moroccan banking

By Moncef El Kharroubi, Strategy & PMO Director, Al Barid Bank Group

GITEX Morocco is now behind us. Three days, three panels, hundreds of conversations in the hallways between startup founders, bank executives, regulators, and journalists. This kind of event often has the advantage of bringing to light what is only half-said in formal meetings. Here is what we took away—and what it means for Al Barid Bank in the months ahead.

First strong signal: financial inclusion has moved from being a CSR topic to a strategic priority. Three years ago, speaking about inclusion at a tech conference risked being perceived as moralizing.

Today, the most pragmatic players in the sector—investors, regulators, and fintechs themselves—have understood that underbanked populations represent a massive, untapped market, and that the first institutions to reach them sustainably will gain a considerable competitive advantage. For Al Barid Bank, whose identity has been built around this mission for decades, this shift represents both a validation of its positioning and a strategic opportunity that is being fully seized, transformed into a driver of value creation and an accelerator of its ambitions.

Second signal: cybersecurity has definitively left the server room and entered the boardroom. Leaders who once refused to speak about it publicly, fearing they might alarm their customers or shareholders, have begun to change their stance. Transparency around cyber risks, long perceived as a weakness, is becoming a sign of institutional maturity. Those who communicate clearly about their protection systems and incident management are regaining the trust they thought they would lose by exposing themselves. We are firmly aligned with this dynamic.

Third signal: the Moroccan fintech ecosystem has reached a new level. It is no longer an ecosystem of pitches and promises; it is an ecosystem of products, customers, and revenue. Players like those we brought together around the table on April 9 have business models that work, teams that deliver, and regional ambitions that are beginning to take shape. For an institution like Al Barid Bank, this maturation is an opportunity. The partnerships we are building today with this ecosystem are not experiments—they are the foundations of our digital strategy for the next five years.

Ultimately, what GITEX reveals about the future of banking in Morocco is this: the next battle will be fought over trust, not technology. All players will have access to the same tools, the same cloud infrastructures, the same algorithms.

The difference will lie in the ability to be perceived as trustworthy by citizens who are increasingly informed and increasingly demanding.

It is a battle for which Al Barid Bank is structurally well positioned. Our history, our network, our public mission, our partnerships—all of this forms a reservoir of trust that we have a responsibility to uphold and the ambition to grow.

GITEX is over. Our work continues.