Holders of Chinese UnionPay banking cards will be able to pay for their shopping, dining, travel and medical bills and draw cash in local currency in Egypt in June, said a senior executive of the National Bank of Egypt (NBE), according to reports by the Chinese news agency Xinhua. Yasser El Negouly, chief representative of the NBE Shanghai Representative Office, told Xinhua that the biggest commercial bank in Egypt is working closely in this regard with China UnionPay, but he declined to give the specific date of when this service will officially begin. The reports added that trial operations begun in Egypt since March this year, according to China UnionPay, the largest bank card network in China. Egypt will be the only country in Africa as well as in the Arabworld to accept China UnionPay banking cards, Negouly was reported to have said. Currently, only bankcards with logos like Visa or MasterCard are accepted in Egypt, he said prior to the 2007 Annual Meetings of the Board of Governors of African Development Bank Group, Xinhua noted. A total of 52,000 Chinese visited Egypt in 2006, China s Foreign Ministry had quoted statistics from the Egyptian government as saying.
