Egypt – Central bank promotes fintech and e-payments

The executive regulation of e-payments law will be issued within the next few weeks, the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) Deputy Governor, Lobna Helal, announced during her speech at the people and banks conference on Tuesday.

Helal said that the law included a special part for e-payment systems and financial technology, with the aim of developing a deliberate legislative framework that regulates and protects customers' money, and to help achieve financial inclusion and economy growth.

She stressed that digital payments using mobile phones depend on the existence of a legislative structure that facilitates and regulates the process of these payments.

She pointed out that banks have issued 13.5m mobile wallets so far, and a large proportion of them have been activated, pointing out that the CBE is working on issuing the third version of mobile phone portfolios that include new functions, such as lending through mobile wallets.

Helal stressed that the CBE is cooperating with the Ministry of Finance in the automation of government payments and has deployed 16,000 points of sale and 16,000 QR code generators so far.

According to Helal, the total number of Meeza cards issued by banks until the end of October amounted to about 3.5m cards, pointing out that about 1.5m transactions were carried out with a value of EGP 3.6bn.

Helal pointed out that the CBE has issued a new strategy for technological services support and entrepreneurship. The CBE also launched the Innovation Support Fund with a capital of EGP 1bn, and transformed the bank's previous headquarters in Downtown Cairo to become a fintech hub.

She stressed that the CBE attaches great importance to financial inclusion and digital transformation, which will be achieved only by the development of infrastructure, noting that it was difficult to apply financial inclusion without a strong economic agenda to focus on financial inclusion and digital transformation.

Helal pointed out that the CBE put financial inclusion on its agenda in 2008 after the global crisis, and that serious steps were taken until 2011, and then continued four years ago.



Source: MENAFN