Retail Payment Systems
In the OIC Member Countries
48
The national postal authority, Egypt Post, serves 21 million Egyptian with 18 million savings
accounts valued at US$ 4 billion (IFC, 2011). They offer a pension service for 3.5 million
customers for insurance, all currently handled manually. They are embarking on a very
ambitious automation plan to allow for daily reconciliation, a step in modernising the system
and making it amenable to better retail payment practices. So far, 1,200 of the offices are
automated and the remainder are supposed to be automated in the coming years. The postal
authority maintains a large network of 3,800 branches, 60% of which offer financial services.
They also have 1,700 distribution centres that handle postal logistics. Egypt Post staff hand
carry payments directly to 300,000 recipients. It is their intention to provide a third-party
agent network and offer customers mobile financial services, presumably in partnership with
one of the mobile network operators, possibly Etisalat, in which, through its investment arm,
Egypt Post holds a 25% ownership stake.
The Principle Bank for Development and Agricultural Credit (PBDAC) serves nearly 4 million
people and has deep outreach into rural areas via 1,500 branches with 30,000 employees. It
serves nearly 3.8 million farmers and rural customers. As of September 2009, the bank had
$4.6 billion (EGP27.66 billion) in assets.
Payment Infrastructure
Egypt has approximately 4,600 ATMs and 35,000 PoS terminals—the exact numbers are not
available but it does not have a national PoS infrastructure. All PoS networks switch through
VISA and MasterCard. The Commercial International Bank (CIB), Arab Bank, Banque Misr, and
National Bank of Egypt have separate PoS licenses.
Payment Service Providers
1. Fawry. Fawry is a business launched by Vodafone at the end of 2008 that has installed and
maintained 6,000 PoS terminals, mainly in major cities. Considered the largest and most
successful of the payment systems providers in Egypt, it processes over 1 million
transactions per month. The NBE, Bank of Cairo, Banque Misr, Bank of Alexandria, and
Credite Agricole all use the company’s payment services and some more banks will join the
network. Fawry offers airtime, internet, charity, brokerage, and Cash-U purchases. So far,
they appear to have no interest in mobile money and probably do not have sufficient assets
to move in that direction yet.
2. Masary. Masary is an applications and payment systems development brand (APSD)
launched by Vodafone in April 2009. From April 2009 to April 2011, it sold $20 million in
airtime credit. Vodafone Masary’s primary market as the unbanked and under-banked,