The future smart banks

The shape of future money-affiliated services was the main question posed to the key figures on the platform as well as the attendees. Participants pinned out that financial transaction in Egypt would still struggle with the old methods, despite the world transformation into electronic systems, for the security and safety the manual methods provide to the citizen. Thus, laying down regulatory laws for electronic financial transactions is required urgently and with no further delays.

The session was spearheaded by Mahmoud Abd Al-Latif, Chairman of Alexandria Bank 'San Paulo', and witnessed the participation of Omar Hegazy, Executive Manager -Tejari, Mohammed Maged, Chairman of Egypt's banks, Mostafa Samaha, Chairman of the Egyptian Committee for Smart Cards, and Dr. Ihab Al-Sonbati, International law Expert.

Mohammed Abd Al-Latif highlighted that Egypt is a pioneering country in the ICT field, thus; it is imperative to embark on putting e-commerce legislations into effect, which are going to be the pillars for future transactions. The transformation from Cash to Electronic transactions is very limited, which is totally opposite to the trend of the rest of the world.

Omar Hegazi, pointed out that future of e-Commerce -especially among enterprises- will lead eventually to huge amounts of resources and spending in addition to the speedy operations.

Mohammed Maged reviewed some of the electronic transactions models provided by his institutions. These services are categorized into Banks' services which look after more than 33 banks all over Egypt, in addition to added value operations services and technical consults services.

On the other hand, Mostafa Samaha elaborated on the vitality of using smart cards, referring to countries like Singapore, England, Malaysia, Japan, and Korea who have started using cards for everything even for public transportation. According to Samaha, resorting to smart cards for the finalization of financial operations is crucial for this development from a cash society into and an electronic one.

The gap between reality and vision was raised by Ihab Al-Sonbati who pinned out the challenges facing the transformation into e-Transactions. In the absence of adequate laws guaranteeing dealers security we cannot hope for such a transformation soon.