The decision to stop the use of direct debit cards for customers outside the country, and their use inside Egypt, imposes pressure on many sectors, including: the technology sector, e-commerce, and the family sector.
The rate of abandonment of items in an online shopping cart has been increasing over the past nine years, despite technological advances in electronic payment methods, user experience on websites, and improved payment flows.
The decision to stop using direct debit cards for customers outside Egypt and allowing them to be used inside the country only affected many sectors, including e-commerce, technology, and the family sector. These pressures come in light of the foreign currency shortage crisis that the Egyptian economy is suffering from, which has worsened with the increasing gap between the dollar exchange rate in the official market and the parallel market.
“Debit card crisis” in Egypt: What sectors are affected?
International Monetary Fund Executive Director Kristalina Georgieva has warned that the Egyptian government will deplete its precious foreign exchange reserves unless it devalues the pound again. Data issued by the Central Bank of Egypt indicate an increase in the number of bank cards of various types by up to 5.4 million cards in banks during the past year, and the total number of cards reached about 57.5 million cards by the end of last year. While the number of direct debit cards reached about 23.8 million cards by the end of last year, an increase of about 2.3 million cards in a year.
Financial market experts expected that the decision to stop the use of direct debit cards for customers outside Egypt and to use them inside the country only would be among the solutions that would help limit the waste of dollar revenues or foreign flows within the country.
