Egypt's eFinance and IBM team up to help businesses boost digital payment services

Services will use the latest IBM Power servers, which will lower energy consumption by up to 52%

The partnership between eFinance and IBM aims to accelerate digital transformation and improve customer experience by leveraging the advantages of financial technology. Photo: IBM

The national developer of Egypt's digital payment network, eFinance, and US technology conglomerate IBM have teamed up to expand secure payments services.

Services being utilised by eFinance will now use the latest IBM Power servers, streamlining business processes and lowering energy consumption by up to 52 per cent compared to previous generations, New York-based IBM said in a statement on Friday.

The partnership will accelerate digital transformation and improve customer experience by leveraging the advantages of financial technology, Hossam El Gouly, chief executive of eFinance, said.

“As we accelerate into the future of FinTech, we need the most advanced technology to underpin our ongoing digital transformation efforts to support our public and private sector clients and provide them with the best-in-class services," he said.

Egypt, the Arab world's third-biggest economy, aims to become a digital-first economy, aligned with its Vision 2030 strategy.

Among Cairo's programmes is Digital Egypt, which aims to facilitate the transition and prepare the country for a technology-focused future economy.

The global digital transformation market is projected to hit about $3.95 trillion by 2030, from about $608 billion in 2021, growing at a compound annual rate of more than 23 per cent, data from Grand View Research indicates.

Global end-user spending on public cloud services is expected to reach the $600 billion mark in 2023, with inflationary pressures dictating how much growth the industry will be able to carve out, a study from Gartner showed this month.

FinTech — which remains the highest-funded industry across emerging venture markets, according to start-up data platform Magnitt — is one of the main pillars, as the country is promoting financial inclusion and helping make banking services available to all people.

Aside from big companies, start-ups are also playing a key role in growing the FinTech industry: about 99 per cent of FinTech funding was concentrated in Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, Magnitt said.

The partnership between eFinance and IBM will also include the introduction of streamlined operations across physical infrastructure and the hybrid cloud.

Omar Wael, 13, an Egyptian developer, uses a virtual reality device as he works at his home in Alexandria, Egypt. All photos: Reuters

Wearing a virtual reality headset and black and yellow wired gloves. The Egyptian teenager is hoping to build his own version of the metaverse, allowing people to one day shop, attend classes, or even conduct experiments online.

Omar sits at home with his family in Alexandria, Egypt.

The artificial intelligence junkie became fascinated by the world of virtual reality after watching 'Ready Player One', a 2018 science fiction film in which much of humanity uses a virtual reality simulation. This inspired him to start working on his own version of the project.

His idea started taking shape when the metaverse became more easily accessible, thanks to tech companies investing billions into the industry in the past few years. Using some of his mother's old clothes, Wael developed a sensory vest and glove. He also started working on software that he hopes will allow pupils like himself to attend classes via the metaverse.

'This saves the environment and reduces traffic,' he says. 'Researchers who work on chemical experiments won't have to buy expensive chemical materials, they can simply carry out their experiments in a virtual lab, in a simulation of what happens in reality.'

Omar won various local and international awards for his project 'The Other World' - for which he hopes to secure funding to enable him to develop it further.

The teen's passion for AI and technology started when he was aged only 5. He built his first robot when he was 9.

As a result, eFinance will be able to host customer data and workloads more efficiently, reducing the footprint of its data centres and floor space by up to 40 per cent, and energy consumption by 50 per cent.

“As financial organisations progress on their modernisation journeys, they need an approach that allows various cloud-based applications to work in concert," said Marwa Abbas, general manager of IBM Egypt.

"A hybrid cloud approach offers the needed flexibility, resiliency and sustainability for eFinance to cater to their clients’ demands and accelerate their ongoing digital transformation journey."