Retail Payment Systems
In the OIC Member Countries
46
13 per cent of Egyptian population has bank accounts. 17 Egypt’s banking system is healthy, in
part because it is dominated by wealthy individuals.
Egypt has focused on building its ICT infrastructure since the mid-1990s, which was reflected
by the introduction of the liberalisation program of Telecom Egypt in 1998 and the
establishment of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) in 1999.
This liberalisation along with ICT growth contributed also to the modernisation of payment
systems and in the early 1990s, the first local credit card issued. Although the number of
cardholders remained small, constituting less than 7% of bank customers at that time (Kamel
and Hassan, 2003). In 2001, Citibank and Vodafone launched a co-branded credit card to add a
new product to the growing variety of financial products in the Egyptian market.
The use of ATMs has been in place since 1994, yet the rate of growth and adoption was fairly
low with only 721 in 2001. Several banks have installed interactive voice response (IVR)
systems and established call centres in 1999. Even though internet access has been available
since 1993 (and from 1994 for commercial use), it was in 1996 that the government made an
official address authorising the private sector to step into the provision of internet services.
Internet banking, however, was not fully introduced until late 2001 when Citibank offered
their first such services as a prototype. Although GSM service was started in 1996, mobile
banking services are not very popular among Egyptian bank customers.
According to the IFC (2011), 4 million people, or 5% of the population, are served through
commercial banks. About 4.5 million are served through the government owned PBDAC, while
21 million people have savings accounts through the Post Office. In 2014, according to the
Global Findex data, there are 4.64 commercial bank branches per 100,000 adults in Egypt.
The Egyptian Bank Company (EBC) has a product to automate the salaries of 6 million people
through a card-based system.18 E-Finance is the technology arm of the Ministry of Finance and
applies to all government offices, such as tax collection, health care, and education, bringing
the Ministry of Finance 30 million customers. It is their intention further to automate services
through mobile networks. The Ministry of Finance issues 30,000 cheques every day to
suppliers alone. EBC is partnering with the retail payment services company, Fawry, to access
urban agents and with the applications development company, Masary, to access rural agents.
Four different ministries are involved in delivering subsidy payments.
17 Data from database: Global Findex (Global Financial Inclusion Database) 2015
18 EBC is owned by a combination of government (54%) and private banks. EBC has been tasked with providing an open
network for mobile payments to link banks and MNOs.