The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) announced that it will roll out an electronic set-off for hard currency cheques as of 14 June.

The CBE said that the action came in the implementation of Egypt’s national council of payments’ strategy under the chairmanship of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi

The new system will benefit Egypt’s banking system, chiefly by decreasing the cost of this kind of transactions among banks and reducing the time these transactions take, said deputy governor of the CBE Ramy Abu El-Naga.

It also supports the technical integration with up-to-date systems that is being applied in Egypt’s banking system, according to Abu El-Naga.

Sub-governor Amany Shams El-Din expounded that the new system would enhance the CBE’s supervision on such kind of transactions and spur banks to consider decreasing the banking fees imposed on the collection of hard currency cheques.

She also noted that the new system will be applied to both US dollar and euro cheques in its first phase.

Sub-governor assistant Ehab Nasr said that through the electronic set-off for cheques, which are in EGP, transactions of EGP 2 trillion were executed in 2020.

He added that the new system would ease hard currency transactions between banks operating in the Egyptian market in a more effective way.