Can I use Apple Pay or Google Pay in Morocco?

The honest answer is: occasionally yes, but never plan your trip around it. Apple Pay and Google Pay work in Morocco only where the merchant has an NFC contactless card terminal, and while those are spreading, they're still the exception rather than the rule. In a modern Marrakech or Casablanca hotel, a chain supermarket like Carrefour or Marjane, a fuel station or a smarter restaurant, you may well be able to tap your phone or watch and it'll just work. Outside those settings, the technology simply isn't there to accept it.

Where it definitely won't help you is exactly where you'll spend most of your day in Morocco. The souk stalls, the spice and leather sellers, the petit taxis, the little cafés serving mint tea, the medina riads in the budget bracket, monument ticket booths and anywhere rural — these run on cash, full stop. Many of them don't take any card at all, let alone a phone tap. So the romantic, hands-in-the-souk part of the trip is a cash economy, and your phone wallet is useless there no matter how good your bank is back home.

There's a practical setup step too. Make sure the actual card behind your Apple Pay or Google Pay is enabled for foreign transactions and that you've told your bank you're travelling, or it may decline even where a terminal exists. A travel-friendly card (one of the fee-free debit cards or multi-currency apps many travellers use) loaded into your phone gives you the best shot at smooth contactless when the option appears, and good exchange rates. But the card or phone is still failing over to cash the moment you leave the modern-retail bubble.

So my standing advice: keep Apple Pay or Google Pay set up as a convenient bonus for the places that take it — it's genuinely handy in hotels and supermarkets — but carry dirham cash and a physical chip-and-PIN card every single day as your real payment methods. Pull cash from ATMs as you go, keep a card for hotels and bigger restaurants, and treat a successful phone tap as a pleasant surprise rather than the plan. Build your trip on cash-first and you'll never be caught out.