The Meeza system is part of Egypt’s strategy to digitise and foster financial inclusion.

The government has previously announced that it would replace all payroll slips for state employees with Meeza cards by the end of 2022.

According to the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS), Egypt currently employs around six million state employees.

The drive to digitise salary disbursal comes in implementation of the National Council of Payments’ strategy as per the directives of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, which aims to foster the adoption of cashless transactions.

Besides payroll disbursement, cash subsidies and pensions will also be disbursed through Meeza cards.

The CBE noted that Meeza cards also provide 30 percent of the salary’s value to be disbursed in advance through electronic points of sales (PoS) or online shopping websites.

Furthermore, the CBE launched a number of initiatives that aim to upgrade the infrastructure of electronic payment systems and services; including an electronic payment initiative that increased the number of PoS devices across the country to over 800.

In March, the CBE launched the National Instant Payment Network and its mobile application ‘InstaPay’, which allows clients to process electronic fund transfers instantly and seamlessly.

In September 2018, Egypt’s National Council of Payments issued Resolution 2/2018 that approved the adoption of a national trademark payment system to disburse governmental payments as well as in-kind and cash subsidy disbursements.