Morocco uses the Moroccan dirham (MAD) — and one legal quirk shapes every traveller’s money strategy: it is a closed currency. You cannot meaningfully buy it before you fly or take it home after. Here is the whole system in five minutes.
The basics
Dirhams come in coins and notes people actually use daily; prices in tourist zones are sometimes quoted in euros, but paying in dirhams is always cleaner and usually cheaper. As an order of magnitude, a euro buys roughly ten-and-some dirhams — check the day’s rate on arrival rather than memorising ours.
Getting dirhams
ATMs are everywhere in cities and the honest default — use bank-attached machines and always refuse the machine’s own conversion offer (“charge me in MAD”). Exchange bureaux and banks beat airport desks on rate; the airport desk is fine for landing cash. Keep exchange receipts if you may want to convert leftovers back before departure.
Spending them
Cards work in riads, restaurants and modern shops; cash rules souks, taxis, tips and the countryside — the full split is in our cards-and-cash guide. Small notes are the practical gold: big notes meet “no change” everywhere.
The closed-currency exit strategy
Spend down before the airport, convert genuine leftovers at a bank with receipts, and treat remaining coins as souvenirs. On a private circuit the big costs are prepaid, so your cash needs shrink to food, tips and treasure — budgeting detail in the budget FAQ.
Anas Benjelloun — Anas covers the practical side of travelling in Morocco — money, SIM cards, taxis, scams to sidestep, what things cost and when to book. He updates his pages the boring way, by checking, and takes a quiet pride in the fact that his airport-to-medina instructions have never stranded anyone. If a price appears in one of his articles, he has paid it recently.
