The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) announced the launching of its multi-currency electronic check clearing system, allowing the implementation and settlement of checks between Egyptian banks in foreign currencies.

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

The new regulation will be in effect starting next Monday, June 14th.

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

Improving the CBE’s supervision on these transactions, the system could encourage banks to consider decreasing the banking fees imposed on the collection of hard currency checks, says CBE Sub-governor Amany Shams El-Din.

Currently, the first phase will be applied to both USD and Euro checks, no word on other currencies.

Sub-governor’s assistant Ehab Nasr said that through the electronic set-off for checks, which are in Egyptian pounds, transactions of LE 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.

The CBE said that the new system is within the framework of Egypt’s national council of payments’ strategy under the chairmanship of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi.