Egypt has moved up 43 spots in GSMA Mobile Money Regulatory Index 2020, to rank 36th out of 90 countries adopting this type of services, compared to 79th in 2019, becoming the country with the highest growth rate in the Index.

The Minister of Communications and Information Technology Amr Talaat has commented that this milestone reflects Egypt’s successful efforts to achieve the transition into an integrated digital society and its wise vision to support financial inclusion as one of the key pillars for building a competitive digital economy. This comes in light of expediting the attainment of Digital Egypt strategy, which involves employing the latest technology to digitize and render government services through different channels. This is in addition to creating an integrated system for e-payment, and expanding the use of fintech and digital solutions in delivering financial services.

Talaat added that Egypt is seeing significant growth in the number of mobile phone subscribers, exceeding 98 million. Over the past year, he said, the government took several measures to promote the use of mobile wallets, leading to an increase in the number of transactions conducted through them.

In GSMA Mobile Money Regulatory Index 2020, the National Telecom Regulatory Authority (NTRA) ranked 43th in the world and second in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Egypt achieved a Regulatory Index Score of 81 in 2020, compared to 69 in 2019.

The Mobile Money Regulatory Index is an interactive tool that measures the effectiveness of mobile money regulatory frameworks, and scores countries based on the extent to which their regulatory framework enables widespread mobile money adoption. The Index includes six dimensions: Authorisation, Consumer Protection, Transaction Limits, Know-Your-Customer (KYC), Agent Networks, and Investment and Infrastructure Environment.