Digital Payments & Fintech · Mauritania
Fintech & payments regulation in Mauritania (2026)
Mauritania shaded by its digital payments & fintech status
Fintech and digital payments in Mauritania: licensing regime, under Law No. 2021-14 on Electronic Payment Services and Means (Loi relative aux services et moyens de paiement électronique), adopted June/July 2021, supervised by the Banque Centrale de Mauritanie (BCM).
Mauritania has an in-force, dedicated licensing regime for digital payments and e-money: Law 2021-14 (2021) requires prior authorization from the Banque Centrale de Mauritanie to act as a payment institution or electronic money issuer, and opens the activity to non-bank actors. The BCM is the sole regulator, payment institutions (e.g., Moov Money Mauritel) are already licensed, and the national switch GIMTEL is being built out for interoperable mobile and card payments. Adjacent areas such as open banking and BNPL are nascent and not yet covered by dedicated frameworks.
Key points
Law 2021-14 on electronic payment services and means (adopted 2021, published in the Journal Officiel) governs payment services, payment instruments and electronic money, and sets the conditions under which providers may operate in Mauritania.
The Banque Centrale de Mauritanie (BCM) is the supervisory authority; except for licensed banks, no entity may issue or distribute electronic money on a regular basis without prior BCM authorization, with conditions on ownership, shareholder solvency, capital and management integrity.
Non-bank payment institutions operate under the regime, for example Moov Money Mauritel SA is licensed by the BCM as a payment institution, confirming the framework is applied in practice, not merely on paper.
Licensed payment and e-money establishments must comply with anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorism-financing rules, identify clients before providing services, and follow BCM regulatory texts on user/e-money-holder protection; authorizations can be withdrawn for fraud or false information.
The national switch GIMTEL (members include the BCM, MAURIPOST and local banks) is being developed for interoperable retail electronic and mobile payments; a 2024 four-bank real-time P2P proof-of-concept and 2025 Visa Global Registry certification advanced full deployment, with World Bank/AfricaNenda technical support.
There is no dedicated open-banking mandate (GIMTEL is positioned as the future interoperability platform), and Buy-Now-Pay-Later offerings are early-stage with no specific BNPL regulatory framework reported as yet.
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