Visa Electron and Moroccan Banking

Yesterday I went to the Air France agency in Rabat to buy plane tickets. I handed over my Société Générale Visa card (a debit card), and was very politely refused by the tri-lingual sales agent. Despite the fact that the bill was in dirhams and my Visa card works at the local grocery store chain, apparently big purchases (?) with companies headquartered outside of Morocco don't work with this system. Alas, it is a Visa Electron card, and we don't have these in the United States.

As I was walking to the local Société Générale, Morocco bank machine, I had plenty of time to reflect on the problem of hard currencies and purchases. Libraries, not unlike their patrons, apparently have a difficult time of making purchases through companies outside of Morocco. My debit card clearly states that it is not for use outside of Morocco, but not even for use inside Morocco?

Already to pay for my Skype line using PayPal, I have to ask folks in the States to log on to my account and to pay for me. PayPal won't allow transactions from computers in this IP range in payment for Skype.

Booking hotel rooms in France for my upcoming spring break trip is going to involve a trip to a travel agent. Remember those? I haven't been to a travel agent since 2000 when I wanted to price shop for good student-rate travel deals. They had nothing of interest, and I've been my own travel agent ever since.

All of this leads me to wonder how Moroccans leave the country at all. They can only buy tickets on the "expensive" airlines since those are the only ones the travel agents contract with. Ditto for the hotels accessible via travel agencies. Moroccans pay the travel agent in dirhams, and pay an additional conversion fee. Once they get to the destination, I have no idea how they go about paying for meals, taxis, etc. Makes me admire all the more Moroccan colleagues at ESI who are involved in international librarianship, IFLA, and international travel. What a burden!