The Central Bank of Egypt will launch the FinTech Hub in the first quarter of 2022. It will be called the new Financial Technology Center, and will be based in downtown Cairo. Its aim is to support innovative ideas of young people.
The FinTech Hub operates as a platform that brings together all parties of the financial technology ecosystem, including financial technology entrepreneurs, financial institutions, regulators, service providers, experts, and investors. This will be achieved by providing a network of communication with investors and a fund to support financial technology innovations. Egypt aims to become a global centre for the Arab and African financial technology industry, and a home for the next generation of financial services, talent, development and innovation.
This announcement comes on top of that made by the Governor of the Central Bank of Egypt, Tarek Amer, at the First Arab Banking Conference for Cyber Security held at Sharm El- Sheik in October 2021. He said that a banking consortium consisting of three banks - the National Bank of Egypt, Banque du Caire, and Banque Misr - would launch a Fintech Fund later that month to support emerging financial technology companies. The capital of this alliance amounts to EGP 1 billion (USD 63.3 million) .
This conference started on October 7 2021 for three days under the auspices of the Union of Arab Banks in cooperation with the Central Bank of Egypt and the Union of Egyptian Banks.More than 250 experts, including from Egyptian and Arab banks and companies specialised in the field of cybersecurity, participated in the conference. Its main objective was to deepen the knowledge and develop the skills of workers in the field of cybersecurity in Arab banks, especially given their increasing reliance on digital financial technology.
The conference was a platform where officials and experts specialised in the field of cybersecurity at the regional and international levels, would benefit from the exchange of experiences about the efficiency of the Arab banking system and the accelerating global developments in financial technology.
Over the course of the three days, the conference, in 21 working sessions and 32 speakers from Egypt and regional and international countries, discussed important issues related to cybersecurity. At the forefront of these issues was the need to strengthen the cybersecurity position of banks, the readiness to respond to incidents that shift to proactive intelligence, and the detection of the intelligence threat. In addition, there was third-party cybersecurity risk management, cyber-attack evolution, malware detection and response, and international cybersecurity frameworks and standards.
Amer also affirmed that greater coordination between the Central Bank, state institutions and banks has led to a strengthening of the banking digital infrastructure, the use of the best electronic protection techniques, and the development and qualification of employees in cybersecurity
The central bank also launched the FinTech Lab in June 2019. The aim was to enable financial technology service providers to test their innovative applications, solutions, business models or technologies in a real business environment, and on real customers. This meant encouraging the adoption and launching innovative financial technology applications in the Egyptian financial and banking sector, and shortening the time required to launch and present innovative financial technology applications in the Egyptian market. The Lab aimed to reduce the cost of bringing these applications to market.
.