Egypt Post’s experience in postal financial services dates back more than 120 years. The postal operator offered its first savings account through the post office in 1901.
Since then, Egypt Post’s financial service offerings have grown significantly. They are now offered at the post’s 4,200 post offices, 2,000 ATMs and 100 mobile post offices.
“Our aim is financial inclusion for all of Egyptian society and to offer financial services at a high quality and affordable rate,” explains Egypt Post’s General Manger of Quality Control, Nermin Hassan. “Today we offer current accounts for individual and corporate customers, savings accounts, domestic and international money remittances, debits cards, micro finance, and prepaid cards for younger customers, as well as government financial services.”
Currently, Egypt Post manages 25 million savings accounts, offers more than 100 payment services on behalf of government entities, and has issued more than 13 million electronic payment cards. Furthermore, more than 20.4 million domestic money remittances were disbursed through the operator’s post offices in 2020.
In 2019, Egypt Post built on the success of its remittances services by launching its first financial app, which enables customers to manage their financial accounts and send and receive domestic and international money, as well as pay utility bills – all without needing to go to the post office. “We incentivized customers to use the app by giving them a 50% discount on service charges,” Hassan adds.
Egypt Post has now improved its offering further through the launch of its super app, which is an all-encompassing self-contained commerce and communication online platform. “We partnered with one of the most successful fintech companies in Egypt to launch the new Yalla Super App, which will take Egypt Post to the next level of digital financial services and enable us to service our customers with the most advanced, secured financial technology, still at affordable rates,” explains Hassan.
According to Hassan, Egypt Post’s ability to offer financial services on such a large scale made it the ideal partner for the Egyptian Government during the COVID-19 pandemic. “We were depended on to deliver social welfare given to Egyptian citizens who carried out temporary work during the pandemic in March 2020,” she explains. “Egypt Post provided cash disbursement for the first month and then completed citizens’ registration for a prepaid card so they could receive the payments through them. Egypt Post was able to register, deliver and activate more than 1.6 million of these cards in just 15 days.”
In a bid to further promote financial inclusion, Egypt Post has also launched a range of micro finance products. “We have worked with companies that operate under the Financial Supervisory Authority to offer our citizens micro lending products,” Hassan explains. “We have now developed a range of standard services for micro lending, which comply with national regulations. These services include handling loan requests, document submission, loan inquiries, SMS notifications to inform customers of loan status, loan disbursement, and repayments by cash or card.”
In the future, Egypt Post has plans to expand its financial service offering further with the launch of several new products, as Hassan explains: “We are currently developing micro healthcare and micro insurance products in partnership with an international insurance company. We are also working on enabling all payment services to be made via our ATM/ITM network, making it easier for things like social housing instalments, traffic violations and micro lending installments to be paid 24/7.”
“Within the Yalla Super App we will also be developing a mini-app for communities,” she continues. “This is a solution for closed communities, such as universities or schools, which offers services such as digital access control, service requests, intra-community payments, news bulletins, and social collaboration. The solution promotes cashless transactions within the community and offers a seamless digital customer experience.”
This article first appeared in the Autumn 2021 issue of Union Postale.