Established on 29 October 1865, Egypt Post is one of the oldest governmental institutions in the country. For almost 157 years, the Post has been offering financial and postal services of good quality and at affordable rates to citizens all over Egypt, fulfilling its universal service obligation. Today, inclusivity, affordability, and digital empowerment top Egypt Post’s strategic agenda.
Over the years, Egypt Post’s role has gone far beyond traditional postal services: from selling salt and soda stamps, pilgrims' tickets, ship tickets, debt bonds, and bond vouchers, to delivering telegraph and telephone services as part of a franchise granted by the telephone authority.Today, with the aims of inclusivity, affordability, and digital empowerment added to our strategy, Egypt Post provides more than 160 financial, postal, and governmental services via its network of post offices, kiosks, ATMs, and digital apps (Wassalah and Yalla).
Egypt Post’s savings accounts are the most inclusive financial service in Egypt. Some 25 million savings accounts are managed by our staff, out of which 4.8 million accounts are held by women, which is the largest number in Egypt, among all financial institutions and banks.
In 2005, responding to the evolving needs of citizens, Egypt Post transformed its paper savings books to electronic debit payment cards that can be used locally at ATMs. In 2010, the Post issued its first electronic debit card to be used for cashless payments and online purchases, for both domestic and cross-border transactions. In 2013, Egypt Post issued its first prepaid cards for youth, starting from 16 years old.
The fierce competition coming from mobile wallets pushed Egypt Post to further accelerate its digital transformation by creating the first super app in Egypt and the Middle East. Launched in February 2022, Yalla App is not only a digital financial tool for making online payments, money transfers and purchases, such as food and medication, – it is a complete financial digital solution providing to both individual and business customers a wide range of services related to e-commerce, electronic invoicing, expense management, staff salary payments, and supplier payouts, to name only a few.
Four months after its launch, the app has reached 700,000 users, and 400,000 transactions have been made of a total value of 4 billion Egyptian pounds – the results that have completely exceeded previous market benchmarks.
In support of Egypt Vision 2030 as well as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 1 on No Poverty and 8 on Decent Work and Economic Growth, Egypt Post prioritizes the provision of accessible remittance and microfinance services to individuals, entrepreneurs and small businesses in the country.
Domestic money remittances are our second inclusive service with more than 20 million instant money remittances issued last year across our domestic network. Inbound international money remittances being one of the most basic yet costliest services, our focus in 2022 was to lower this cost in order to facilitate access to international remittances to citizens all across Egypt. I am proud to say that we have achieved this objective through our recent partnership with Qatar Post, which, since its launch last February, fostered a tremendous decrease in the international money remittances costs.
In the area of social inclusion, Egypt Post has partnered with microlending entities to broaden access to essential microfinance services, such as loan requests and queries, document submissions, SMS notifications about the loan status, loan disbursements, and instalment payments. Wider and easier access to microfinance services lowers the operational costs of lending entities, thereby lowering interest rates, and this is the added value provided by Egypt Post.
Internationally, being part of the most extensive logistics chain worldwide, Egypt Post has a competitive advantage to support small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to reach international market with good quality shipping services at affordable rates.
Domestically, Egypt Post has designed shipping products that enable SMEs to transport products through its 4,300 post offices and request payment upon delivery. Payments can be received on a saving or current account in Egypt Post or via a prepaid electronic card, and an SMS notification is sent once the money is deposited. Since this service began in July 2020, over 4,800 merchants have used Egypt Post’s services to ship more than 140,000 parcels.
In 2022, Egypt Post launched Wassalah, a shipping app that enables customers to request and communicate with a courier, manage shipments and track orders and financial deposits.
Accessible and high-quality services at affordable rates is not our only priority. Postal security and compliance with international security standards are equally on top of our agenda.
This approach made Egypt Post’s network number one choice for many governmental and judicial entities, who choose the Post to provide services on their behalf. Among those are the Ministry of Education, the Social Housing Fund, and the Public Prosecution Office. This is the trust that we are proud of.
Egypt Post is an adaptive institution, whose products and services continuously evolve to both address current citizens’ needs and support the main policies and strategies of the Egyptian Government. Proactively responding to emerging technologies, new competitors and market changes is what helps Egypt Post remain relevant and sustainable.
We believe that our national role is to serve and, while doing so, leave no one behind by including all citizens regardless of their culture and social status.
As we are moving towards digitalization, Egypt Post aims to fully empower the population through the provision of modern services that will help guarantee our citizens’ right to a decent life.
Dr. Sharif Mohamed Farouk
Chairman, Egypt Post