Led · Series A · Oct 2025

Founded in 2020 by husband-and-wife team Ismael and Sophia Belkhayat, Chari began as a mobile marketplace enabling corner shops to procure fast-moving consumer goods directly from distributors. The company has since evolved toward a banking-as-a-service model, using its recently obtained payment-institution licence from Bank Al-Maghrib to embed digital payments, credit, and other financial tools inside its merchant app. More than 20,000 small retailers across Morocco, Tunisia, and Côte d’Ivoire now use Chari’s platform, making it one of the region’s largest informal-retail digitisation plays. With a “super app” approach, Chari aims to transform these mom-and-pop stores into grassroots financial access points for underbanked communities. Future plans include opening its in-house financial rails to third-party developers, positioning the startup as a regional fintech enabler across Francophone Africa. To date, Chari has raised roughly $17 million in venture funding, which supports both its commerce logistics operations and the build-out of its fintech infrastructure.