Financial Inclusion Through Digital Financial Services and Fintech: The Case of Egypt

This case study documents Egypt’s experience in leveraging new technologies/fintech to achieve financial inclusion, presenting the main opportunities and challenges facing the country and the initiatives Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) is leading to address challenges related to market infrastructure and operational, legal and regulatory frameworks.

Mobile payment use cases that support digital financial services for financial inclusion are examples of these efforts. Going forward, CBE has several areas of focus, including the possibility of developing regulations to allow electronic identity checks (e-KYC), establishing the Computing Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) for the banking sector, working with commercial banks in Egypt to enhance their anti-money laundering (AML) (developing a unified national negative list for Egypt) and announcing the establishment of Egypt’s Regulatory Sandbox.