And now let's go over to Egypt now, Ragda, beyond, we're gonna look beyond the closing numbers this morning here.
Yeah, absolutely.
Johnny Bassett is joining us now with his guest from our studio or from.
He's home at the moment.
Good afternoon to you, Basil.
Good afternoon to you, Rada, and good morning to you, Johnny.
Now guys, we turn our focus to digital payments here in Egypt because let me tell you, Egypt's mobile wallet market is expanding at remarkable speed.
And especially if you see the numbers, according to Central Bank of Egypt data, mobile wallet transactions reached around 4 trillion Egyptian pounds by the end of 2025, while the number of registered wallets rose to 60 million, which is about 19% from 2024 and nearly 4 times the 2019 level.
But the same digital growth is now raising a tougher question.
Are fraud controls and consumer awareness keeping up with adoption?
In February 2026, Egyptian authorities arrested a criminal network linked to international fraud targeting InstaPay, which is Egypt's instant payment app backed by the central bank, and according to the Interior Ministry, stolen funds were transferred to electronic wallets activated by individuals inside Egypt, and then converted into digital currencies.
And in April 2026, the Central Bank of Egypt reportedly mandated banks to establish dedicated anti-fraud departments with a framework specifically covering e-wallets, point of sale terminals, e-commerce platforms, and other digital services.
Joining me now to discuss this is Ahmed Abdelmoghny, Chairman of Transcap Advisory.
First of all, welcome to FinTech TV.
It's a pleasure to have you with us.
Uh, I guess there is no doubt, according to figures that digital payments are growing very, very quickly in Egypt.
But now the question becomes, is Egypt's digital payments market growing faster than its consumer protection and fraud prevention infrastructure?
When millions of people move from cash into wallets and instant payments, does that automatically create a vulnerable transition period in your opinion?
Yes, it does.
And to understand this correctly, we need to know what is the status now in this segment in the market, which is the digital payments and particularly the wallets.
In 2022 in March, with the introduction of the instant payment network, Instant pay, which expanded heavily in the market, this was the initial adoption phase.
Where the expansion was beyond the 15%, Keiger and a wide adoption by over 40 million users, and now it's expanding to reach around 60 million.
This adoption phase has been concluded successfully with a wide range of penetration also in the mobile phone users and everything, so the whole spectrum is ready and the infrastructure readiness was tested heavily.
The only weak point is the fraud mitigation, and we consider this the second phase, which is now building up in Egypt but a little bit slowly, and we will explain why is building trust.
So building trust is the current phase which needs more support from all the regulatory authorities in addition to awareness from the users and More readiness from the infrastructure to mitigate fraud by all possible scenarios.
Uh, to understand the fraud, yes.
And to mitigate the fraud, we need 4 elements.
The first element is understanding that the trigger for fraud is usually by social engineering outside the digital payment framework.
The second point is creating a typology, typology for the fraud.
The third point is Increasing transparency and reports and statistics about the fraud and increasing public trust by expanding on on that point, do you think we actually have enough transparent data to know whether wallet fraud is rising sharply, or is it perhaps the perception being shaped by high profile cases?
Yes, the issue is perception, and the real trigger or cause is the lack of transparency.
We don't have transparent reports about statistics of fraud cases.
What are the values of the fraud, how Is the government taking action through the Financial regulatory authority or the banking system or any regulatory framework to mitigate this risk?
And the fourth point, which is not really tackled with transparency, is there a recovery.
For those fraudulent cases or not, and to increase the public trust, we need to tackle the four points.
Widespread analysis and statistics, the typology should be very clear.
The 3rd point is analysis of the fraud mechanisms and how to mitigate them with controls, for example, like controls over fishing or something that affects the network itself.
And the 4th point is increasing and building the trust through improving the perception.
Mhm.
You, you just mentioned social engineering a short while ago.
Do you think that this is the core tool, let's say if we can call it that, that fraudsters, fraudsters are using uh to do their fraudulent transactions, uh, that this is the majority of the cases and that the wallets themselves are fine, they have nothing wrong with them.
Yes, the wallets are absolutely fine.
So the issue or trigger is the social engineering.
So there is always a spot on direct communication with a certain consumer or let's say I'm a wire wallet user, and there is always some urgency, either.
Representing that they are the customer service of banks and wanting to phish or confirm their OTPs, and this is the most dangerous element, asking for the OTPs.
And third, also there could Be some emotional stress and time-related stress that because of investment or winning a prize or something like this, and this trigger with the stress and urgency to take action comes from the social media or social engineering in general.
Mhm.
And what about the cash out network?
Do you think it is the weak link, the point where traceable digital money becomes hard to recover physical cash?
Yes, because this is the last and the weakest link unfortunately, but the link can happen at we've seen fraud cases from ATMs.
Converting digital wallets to physical cash through ATMs or something like this, and this is the 3rd or let's say the 4th and last weakest point which needs more controls.
And in general also public awareness should be increased because it has to be communicated to the general public and with plain simple Arabic terms.
In order to cater for the mass users, so we don't cater, we have 60 million digital wallets, so we don't cater for the majority which are well educated or let's say well poised to take their action and their guard, and they are aware of the fraudulent cases.
The general public needs more explanation in plain, simple Arabic.
And we've seen a lot of these campaigns recently.
There is a rise in public awareness campaigns concerning fraudulent transactions on applications like Instapay, but some people think that banks, fintechs, and regulators place too much responsibility on the customer instead of designing systems that can detect and stop fraud in real time.
What do you think?
Yes, the last issue that I wanted to highlight here is accountability.
So at the end, if there is a financial loss, and let's say the financial loss is 10,000 pounds, we go around three parties.
Is it the consumer or the user?
Is it the bank or is it the wallet, or let's say mobile operator, if it's Vodafone Cash or any type of wallets, and those three usually, usually come to blame at the end, the consumer.
Or the customer that is using the wallet rather than the bank itself or the wallet or application that should have enough controls to make sure of the personality of the user, the OTPs are corrected, inserted.
Correctly, and there should be also analytics about consumer behavior, and this is also another weak link in the system.
We're not saying that the infrastructure is lousy, the infrastructure is very solid, but we need to have more behavioral analytics in order to spot.
The fraud before it happens, not try to just correct the wrong and who to blame, and at the end there is a financial loss.
Usually banks shy away from this loss and push it to the final consumer.
Mhm.
Uh, Ahmed Abdelboni, chairman of TransCp Advisory, thank you very much for joining us today.
And now back to you, Rhoda.
Thank you, it's a pleasure and have a good day.
