Remittances are playing a vital role in Egypt’s economy, serving as one of the country’s largest sources of foreign exchange, alongside revenues from tourism, the Suez Canal, and exports. However, the sector continues to face challenges, including expense transaction fees, delays, and fragmented services.

To address these issues, Egypt’s public and private sectors are modernizing financial infrastructure and promoting digital transformation in remittances, aiming to improve efficiency, enhance customer experience, and expand financial access.

Payment modernization efforts

The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) has been at the forefront of these efforts, introducing several initiatives to strengthen the electronic financial ecosystem, and promote digital remittance channels. During 2022-2023, the CBE implemented a pilot for digitalization of remittances, with the World Bank’s technical assistance. The pilot specifically focused on women remittance receivers in rural areas, with the overall aim of financially including them.

Three banks participated in the pilot, working on product design, financial literacy and incentives for women remittance receivers. They conducted behavioral surveys, designed bundled products, and encouraged women to receive and spend remittances digitally.

Within one year of the pilot, approximately 250,000 new accounts were opened, and the number and value of remittance transactions received by women increased significantly. Incoming transactions for women grew by 13%, while it was a 1.4% increase for men, and the value of incoming international remittance transactions for women increased by 13%, while there was a 1.4% increase for men.

The pilot program also expanded digital payment acceptance among small merchants to enable users to spend digitally when making purchases at everyday stores. This included acquiring more and smaller merchants in the pilot locations, as well as providing incentives for digital payments at the point-of-sale (POS).

As a result, digital transactions at the POS done using the payment instrument associated with the remittance product led to an increase in the overall digital point-of-sale transactions in the pilot locations of 13% within one year.

This project builds on a series of payment infrastructure modernization initiatives launched over the past years. The Instant Payment Network (IPN), introduced in March 2022, is a real-time payment system that aims to facilitate instant and seamless financial transactions. It enables individuals and businesses to send and receive money instantly, 24/7, across different banks and financial institutions.

IPN is closely linked to InstaPay, a digital payment application that acts as a gateway for users to access IPN services, enabling real-time fund transfers and improving financial inclusion in the country. InstaPay had over 11.5 million users in late-2024, with transaction volumes surpassing EGP 2.7 trillion (US$56.9 billion).

Fintech redefines cross-border payments

This landscape has created fertile ground for fintech startups to innovate within the remittance space.

One of these innovative startups is Munify, a Cairo-based cross-border neobank targeting Egyptians abroad. Founded in 2024 by Khalid Ashmawy, a former Microsoft and Uber executive and co-founder of proptech platform Huspy, Munify offers instant, low-cost remittances to Egypt, debit cards, tools to hedge against local currency volatility, and the ability to open US bank accounts. It targets freelancers, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and Egyptians living overseas who face high remittance fees and delays in settlement, serving markets across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), in addition to the US and the UK.

In September 2025, Munify secured a US$3 million seed round to scale engineering and compliance teams, strengthen regulatory and banking partnerships, and expand into additional markets.

Another prominent player from Egypt is Telda. Founded in 2021 as a peer-to-peer (P2P) payment app for Egypt’s unbanked population, Telda has since evolved into a fully integrated digital financial platform offering a digital account, payment cards, personal financial management tools, payment services, and more. It aims to promote financial inclusion and simplify digital payments in Egypt, especially for younger, tech-savvy users.

Most recently, it acquired City Capital, a licensed brokerage firm, and secured a custodian license, allowing it offer retail stock trading, and business-to-business (B2B) asset management services.

It claimed 500,000 active users and over US$300 million in processed payments as of 2024.

In addition to homegrown digital remittance innovators, several international players are also entering Egypt’s high-growth remittance corridor. LemFi, for example, is a US-headquartered remittance company that recently switched on low-cost transfers to Egypt, its 31st destination. The company serves over 2 million users, leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and a robust credit service to enable “send now, pay later” remittances.

Similarly, Careem Pay, the payments platform within the Dubai-based Careem app, expanded its remittance service to Egypt, enabling residents in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to transfer money directly to Egyptian bank accounts at competitive rates. Egypt is among the top five recipients of remittances from the UAE, with an estimated market size of approximately US$10 billion in recent years.

Most recently, US-headquartered cross-border payments startup Grey launched support for Egypt and Morocco, enabling users in the two countries to send and receive international payments in their local currency within minutes. It targets thousands of students, freelancers, and remote workers.

Grey provides users with USD, EUR, and GBP bank account details. Users can convert funds to local currency in under 10 minutes at real-time exchange rates. It also provides virtual USD debit cards, support for USDC cryptocurrency payments, and physical cards, serving over 2 million users across 50+ countries.

Egypt’s massive remittance sector

Egypt is one of the largest remittance receiving countries in the world, driven by persistent currency shortages and a record-size diaspora of 11.09 million. According to the CBE, inflows reached US$23.2 billion between January and July 2025, up from US$15.5 billion a year earlier, marking an increase of 49.7%. In July alone, remittances hit a record US$3.8 billion, up 26.3% from US$3 billion in July 2024.

Yet, traditional bank wires can take days and cost up to 7% in fees, driving many to informal channels like hawala for better rates and faster access. Hawala is an informal money transfer system that relies on trust and personal networks to move funds without actual money changing hands.

These transfers are arranged through a network of “hawaladars” or hawala dealers, who maintain ledgers to record credits and debits between one another. Debt between hawala dealers can be settled in cash, property, or services. A hawaladar who doesn’t keep their end of the deal in the implied contractual system of hawala will be tagged as one who has lost their honor and will be excommunicated from the network.

Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Middle East, based on image by semihymc and user850788 via Freepik