AAIB signed the deal with both Temenos and IBM back in 2015. Temenos Transact – or T24 as it was known when the deal was signed – is an end-to-end automated core banking offering. Temenos’ Transact product is already used by a number of Egyptian banks. These include Commercial Bank of Egypt, Suez Canal Bank, Banque du Caire and Housing and Development Bank. AAIB implemented Oracle’s Financial Services Applications (OFSA) back in 2004 to revamp its reporting and decision-making capabilities across its branches. The bank, which is the product of a joint venture between the Egypt’s central bank and the Kuwait Investment Authority, netted a profit of $264 million in 2018. The same year it signed with Temenos, AAIB also acquired the loan and deposit portfolios of the Canadian Bank of Nova Scotia for around EGP 1 billion ($63.6 million).
Focusing on revamping its own technology and shop front, the bank also works with a number of fintechs. One is PayMob, a start-up which consolidates local payment methods through a single application programme interface. Day by day, there’s a consistency in new payment options getting added to the market – local card schemes, neobanks, digital wallets – and we onboard all these to our platform. 67% of Egyptians rely on cash as their main source of payment. AAIB will also be tackling this cash-heavy habit as it rolls out its new digital core banking system. In May 2019, Egypt’s central bank helped to boost digital payment adoption. It did this by subsidizing 100,000 card terminals to enable acceptance for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).