How do I get small change and break large notes in Morocco?

This is the unglamorous skill that quietly makes or breaks your daily ease in Morocco, so I coach every guest on it. The problem is structural: ATMs love to dispense crisp 200-dirham notes, but the economy you actually move through — petit taxis, a tip for the bag carrier, a tagine at a hole-in-the-wall, a bottle of water, a few dirhams for a parking guardian — runs on coins and small notes. Hand a 200 to a taxi driver for a 20-dirham ride and you will get a pained look and often a genuine inability to make change.

The first fix is at the ATM itself: withdraw odd amounts rather than round ones. Asking for 1,900 dirhams instead of 2,000 nudges the machine toward including some 100s and 50s rather than only 200s. It is a small trick but it genuinely helps. Whenever a machine does give you a mix, treat the small notes as precious and spend the big ones first in places equipped to break them.

To break large notes deliberately, target the businesses that have full tills: supermarkets (Carrefour, Marjane, BIM), petrol stations, pharmacies and busier sit-down cafés and restaurants handle 200s without blinking. So does your riad or hotel reception — I often have guests simply ask the front desk to change a big note into smaller ones, which they will usually do as a courtesy. Do this early in the day and early in your trip, before you are standing at a tiny stall needing exact change you do not have.

My standing rule on the ground: protect your small money. Keep coins and 20- and 50-dirham notes in a separate pocket from the big bills, and pay for small things with small money so you keep accumulating it through change. For the souk specifically, having close-to-exact notes also strengthens your bargaining — "I only have 100" lands very differently when it is visibly true. Manage your change actively and you glide through a cash-first country instead of fighting it.