Egypt is set to introduce new wireless payment solutions, including Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, to enhance the country’s financial infrastructure.
Ehab Nasr, Assistant Sub Governor of the Central Bank for Electronic Payment Operations and Systems, announced this development at Egypt’s 2022 Banking Institute conference on Tuesday, 28 June.
Although it is unclear when these solutions will hit the market, they are hailed as the next step to Egypt’s increasingly cashless economy.
The Central Bank of Egypt has been working to integrate these technologies in accordance with an action plan approved by the National Payments Council and supervised by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Any international companies introduced to the market will operate with “specific rules set by the Central Bank.”
Additionally, the Central Bank will be implementing various national, large-scale services that facilitate the online banking process.
“We are working on establishing the national system for card tokenization, which will enable citizens to use their bank cards electronically using smartphones (Card Tokenization), as the new national platform will allow international companies to enter the Egyptian market,” states Nasr.
The value of digital transactions rose from EGP 4.5 trillion in 2020 to EGP 6.5 trillion by the end of 2021, according to Nasr. Moreover, he adds that the number of e-wallets in Egypt has increased by 211 percent over the past few years, going from approximately EGP 9 million to EGP 27.7 million.
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