- The National Bank of Egypt (NBE), which is the country’s largest and oldest bank, said that it is going to work with the firms Ripple and Lulu International Exchange to help boost the efficiency and speed of cross-border payments.
- The payment corridor that the organisations will focus on in particular will be the one between the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.
- A spokesperson for NBE said that the move would help lead to improved efficiency levels in the future – and that costs would also be brought down for customers.
A leading bank in Egypt has announced that it will link up with blockchain-powered fintech powerhouse Ripple to help enhance its cross-border payments offer.
The National Bank of Egypt (NBE) is the country’s oldest and largest bank.
NBE said that it is going to work with Ripple to speed up transactions between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Egypt by using the RippleNet platform.
The move will also see NBE pair up with Lulu International Exchange, a firm based in the UAE.
The announcement comes after RippleNet secured partnerships with a number of big banks across the globe.
Siam Commercial Bank in Thailand is one of them, and the UnionBank of the Philippines is another.
In a statement on the new collaboration, a leading figure at NBE said that the company was aiming to set up a series of new alliances to bring down the time and costs involved in payment processes.
Hesham Elsafty, who serves as head for Financial Institutions and International Financial Services at the bank, said that the firm was looking forward to efficiency levels going up.
“NBE’s partnership with Ripple will help to improve overall efficiency by enabling NBE to establish new alliances across wider markets with reduced cost and quicker integration time,” he said.
He went on to praise the two partner organisations, predicting that the three organisations could enhance the process of sending money between the UAE and Egypt.
“We are very excited to announce our new partnership with Ripple and Lulu which we believe will contribute to a further acceleration of the Egypt-UAE remittances corridor,” he added.
For Lulu Financial Group, the company’s managing director said that the partnership would help boost payments in what is a key region for the payments sector.
Adeeb Ahamed said that “meaningful collaboration” was likely to now take place.
“Our partnership with Ripple and NBE reaffirms our commitment to enhance the payments ecosystem of the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region through meaningful collaboration and suitable adoption of technology,” he explained.
The news comes even as Ripple continues to fight allegations from a US regulator that it engaged in an unregulated securities offering.
The Securities and Exchange Commission made the claim – which Ripple denies.
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