In the context of its support to micro-enterprises and provisioning of e-services to satisfy the needs of this sector, the Commercial International Bank-Egypt (CIB) organized a workshop for microfinance organizations with the aim of introducing them to the Bank’s mobile payment services. The workshop was held under the auspices of the Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority (EFSA), represented by Mr. Gamal Khalifa, the Head of Microfinance.
The “Mobile Payment Services” workshop was organized in line with the directives of the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) issued to banks to start providing mobile payment services to microfinance organizations. Such services contribute to offering a more convenient, secure and less costly financial transactions, as they allow organizations, for example but not limited to, to deposit loans directly to customers’ smart wallets on mobile phones. Besides, customers will be able to pay loan installments to the organization through the same smart wallet.
During the workshop, CIB employees, from the Digital Banking pision, provided an in-depth description of the general features and benefits of mobile payment service, clarifying its positive returns for the microfinance organizations and its customers, including cost saving and better managing risks resulting from cash transfers between organizations and customers. This will, consequently, lead to broadening customers bases for organizations and strengthen financial inclusion in the society. Moreover, workshop participants received a full clarification about their expected role as identified by the CBE last November, which regulates the mobile payment transactions. Finally, the workshop highlighted the full work cycle and listed all documents needed to be eligible for providing this service.
It is worth mentioning that the CBE, in cooperation with the EFSA and the Egyptian Microfinance Federation, announced the launch of a pilot phase to implement payments via mobile phones, which included a number of selected organizations to try providing these services to its customers in association with banks. The list of selected banks included CIB-Egypt, the leading bank in e-payments, to be one of the participating banks for this phase implementation.
Mr. Mohamed Farag, CIB Chief Digital Officer, said that CIB, Egypt’s largest private bank, is firmly committed to follow and implement the directives of CBE as well as other regulatory bodies. In fact, such directions strengthen the Bank’s ongoing drive to deliver the latest e-solutions to customers, including retail and corporate, in order to fulfill their evolving demands and offer an innovative banking experience.
He added, “From the very beginning of mobile payments launch, CIB realized that microfinance organizations and its customers are the most dynamic sectors that should be supported to accelerate the economic development and that they should be attracted via the suitable e-services. Accordingly, the Bank approached different organizations throughout last year and succeeded to provide services to some of them. This is an added value to CIB, considering the experience it has gained in this regard, which will consequently save time and effort during the implementation of pilot phase.”