Digital payments are rapidly reshaping North Africa’s economic landscape formalising informal trade, accelerating financial inclusion, and opening new pathways for fintech innovation and cross-border growth.
With Egypt emerging as a hub for digital transformation and fintech talent, global payment leader Network International is helping shape this new frontier.
In this exclusive interview, Mohamed Abu Gebba, Network International’s Managing Director for North Africa & Egypt, discusses the company’s role in strengthening digital ecosystems, building trust, supporting regulators, and positioning Egypt as a launchpad for regional payment innovation.
- How is digital payment infrastructure contributing to formalising and expanding North Africa’s informal economy?
We’re seeing a structural shift in North Africa’s economy—and digital payments are right at the centre of it.
The informal sector has long been dominant across the region.
But today, three key forces are converging: the push for financial inclusion of the millions of underbanked and unbanked populations, widespread mobile adoption creating a digital-first consumer base, and regulators that are leaning into progressive regulations promoting digital transformation and cashless ecosystems. That’s creating the perfect moment for change.
At Network International, we’re not just observing this shift—we’re helping drive it. With over 30 years in the region, we support over 250 financial institutions and 240,000 merchants across the Middle East and Africa. In Egypt alone, we power critical payment infrastructure for more than 20 banks, helping them launch new digital propositions, embed fintech capabilities, and scale securely.
For fintechs, time-to-market is critical. Our platform helps them launch fast by offering a full-stack platform that integrates tokenisation, fraud management, APIs, and real-time processing—all underpinned by our regulatory-grade compliance and deep market expertise. The result? More people in the system, more transactions digitised, and an economy that’s starting to be less cash-dependent.
- From your experience in Egypt, what makes the country a strategic base for regional fintech innovation?
Egypt isn’t just an important market it’s the heartbeat of our North Africa strategy.
With a population of over 115 million, a vibrant tech ecosystem, and a government that’s made digitalisation a national priority, Egypt offers the scale and momentum that fintech innovation needs. But it’s more than size it’s the quality of talent, the regulatory engagement, and the spirit of innovation we see on the ground, that makes Egypt our largest growth engine in the region.
From our office in Cairo, we support:
- Best practices in technology deployment
- Cross-border product rollouts
- Regional regulatory dialogue
Egypt is also where we prototype and launch many of our digital wallet, loyalty, and fraud prevention solutions before scaling them into neighbouring markets like Libya and Algeria.
- How is Network International working with regulators across North Africa to build a harmonised, secure digital payments environment?
Progress in digital payments doesn’t happen in a vacuum but through collaboration. That’s why we see our role as both a technology enabler and a strategic partner to regulators.
Across North Africa, we actively support central banks in shaping national payment strategies, whether it’s enabling local card schemes or ensuring compliance with data localisation mandates. Our platforms are built with regulatory-grade controls, allowing us to meet local requirements while keeping pace with global best practices.
In Egypt, we’ve built strong partnerships with the Central Bank and key industry stakeholders. That experience, complemented by local experts, now guides how we operate in Libya, Algeria, and Sudan—adapting to each country’s regulatory landscape, while advocating for more harmonized standards across the region.
It’s about building trust—not just with users, but with the entire ecosystem.
- Trust remains a challenge in many communities. What’s your approach to boosting digital trust and financial literacy?
Trust isn’t built with technology alone; it also requires empathy, relevance, and consistency.
In a region as diverse as North Africa, we know that language and culture play a central role in how people engage with digital finance. That’s why we localise not just our interfaces but our entire user journey by supporting Arabic, French, and English, and shaping onboarding experiences that reflect real-world literacy levels and consumer behavior.
But localisation isn’t solely about translation. It’s about building products that feel familiar and intuitive. Our customer support teams are trained to understand local contexts. And our product design ensures that even first-time digital users can transact with confidence.
Ultimately, we’re not just trying to drive adoption, comfort. Because when people trust the system, they stay in it.
- We’re seeing a rise in embedded finance across sectors. How is Network enabling this trend in Egypt and beyond?
Embedded finance is no longer a trend but rather the norm. The companies leading this shift are those that can seamlessly integrate financial services without becoming financial institutions themselves.
That’s where we come in. Our full-stack platform is designed for flexibility and scale. All our value-added services such as instant card issuance, contactless payments, loyalty programs, tokenisation and fraud protection can be embedded into the existing customer journey of a wide range of clients, from early-stage startups to tier-one banks to telcos.
We enable our clients to go live fast with our embedded finance offerings, unlock new revenue streams and scale as needed. Network International handles the backend complexity, so that our clients can focus on innovation, operational agility and customer engagement.
What we’re seeing now is the blurring of lines between financial and non-financial players. Our job is to make that convergence seamless.
- What are the biggest barriers that still stand in the way of widespread digital payment adoption in the region?
The progress in digital payments adoption is real despite the existing barriers.
Financial inclusion remains a major challenge. Millions across the region are still unbanked or underbanked, and for them, digital payments represent a shift in how they participate in the economy. In addition, low levels of financial literacy and a general lack of trust in formal systems slow down adoption of digital payments over and above the lack of sufficient infrastructure.
Language and cultural diversity are another layer. If products aren’t localised properly, or if support doesn’t reflect the local reality, people disengage.
And for innovators, backend complexity is often underestimated. Many promising fintechs struggle to scale because they’re weighed down by regulatory and infrastructure challenges.
At Network, we try to overcome these barriers by offering compliance-ready platforms, localised experiences, and support that meets people where they are. Because when digital payments work for everyone, the entire economy moves forward.
- What role do you see for fintech in shaping North Africa’s long-term economic resilience and competitiveness?
Fintech isn’t just a disruptor; it’s an equaliser.
In North Africa, where informal economies dominate and access to credit or financial tools is often limited, fintech is giving people a new way in. Whether it’s a farmer accepting digital payments for the first time, or a small business launching a digital wallet, we’re seeing real economic transformation at the grassroots.
Our role at Network is to make sure that innovation scales sustainably. That means giving banks the agility to go digital fast, empowering fintech’s with ready-to-use infrastructure, and working with regulators to build frameworks that support growth without compromising security.
We view ourselves as a catalyst for the digital economy, one that bridges the gap between innovation and accessibility. We believe that digital inclusion is a driver of economic inclusion and North Africa’s economic future depends on how effectively our population can participate in the digital economy. Network’s role extends beyond payments to building the foundation on which the region’s digital future will grow.
Fintech is not just about convenience, but also about resilience. It makes economies more adaptable, more inclusive, and more competitive
