Digital payments in Morocco and cash persistence: prioritizing barriers and enablers through a Delphi study

Purpose Cash remains the dominant payment instrument in Morocco despite continued infrastructure upgrades and a more active FinTech ecosystem. Prior research identifies many determinants of digital payment adoption, but rarely clarifies their relative importance from the perspective of ecosystem actors. This study aims to identify and prioritize the barriers sustaining cash use and the enablers most likely to expand digital payment adoption in Morocco. Design/methodology/approach A three-round Delphi study was conducted with 29 payment-ecosystem experts. Round 1 used open-ended questions. Round 2 retained eight barriers and eight enablers based on a majority rule. Round 3 asked experts to rank the retained items; ranks were aggregated to obtain collective priorities and Kendall’s W measured consensus. Findings Cultural attachment to cash and behavioral inertia are ranked as the most influential barriers, followed by merchant-side economic constraints and transaction costs. These barriers matter because they shape the effective cost-benefit calculus of payment choice and slow the conversion of formal access to digital tools into routine use. Interoperability and digital skills receive lower priority. On the enabling side, targeted fee reductions for low-value transactions, lower merchant acceptance costs and the digitization of recurring payments emerge as the top priorities. Consensus is low to moderate (W = 0.21 for barriers; W = 0.18 for enablers), reflecting heterogeneous assessments. Research limitations/implications Results are context-specific and based on expert judgment; rather than direct behavioral observation; future studies may triangulate with merchant and consumer evidence or transaction-level data. Practical implications Accelerating adoption requires prioritizing economic incentives and embedding digital payments into everyday use cases rather than relying solely on technological improvements or the mere expansion of payment infrastructure. Originality/value Provides an ecosystem-based Delphi prioritization of barriers and enablers of digital payment adoption in Morocco and shows that the main challenge lies less in the availability of technology than in the economic and behavioral conditions governing everyday payment use.