Promoting financial inclusion via mobile financial services

The project will assist the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) in meeting its objective of promoting access to finance through the development of a country-wide strategy to develop mobile financial services and retail payment infrastructure. The project will provide the CBE with the relevant capacity in order to ensure the implementation of well-developed action plans, in the framework of the CBE’s Strategic Framework, for the CBE to increase the use of various payment methods in the country. The specific activities to be carried out are as follows:

- Part 1: developing an action plan with implementable actions for the CBE to develop retail payments in Egypt for the coming 5 years;

- Part 2: developing an action plan for improving efficiency of remittance inflows to Egypt;

- Part 3: developing an action plan targeting financial inclusion, defining and prioritizing required actions to promote the inclusion of the poor and those without access to financial services;

- Part 4: developing a data collection and analysis methodology enabling the CBE to better understand the market trends and properties and thus ensure adequate monitoring of the system;

- Part 5: establishing an implementation structure within the CBE to ensure the successful implementation of the action plans;

- Part 6: developing a regional knowledge-sharing workshop in Egypt with the participation other central banks which have been benefiting from support under related operations funded by the Deauville MENA Transition Fund.