In line with Egypt's national digital transformation strategy, and in support of the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE)'s direction to encourage the financial services industry to adopt innovative financial technologies, the NBE has recently joined enterprise software firm R3's global blockchain initiative of over 200 financial services firms, technology companies, central banks, regulators, and trade associations. The collaboration will allow the NBE to explore the efficiency and innovation blockchain technology can bring to banking. Blockchain, or what is known as distributed ledger technology (DLT), is a new technology that allows for the instantaneous processing of transactions across multiple distributed databases efficiently and securely. "By joining this initiative together with world banks and companies, we will be able to closely monitor and engage directly in global blockchain developments," Hisham Okasha, NBE chairperson, said. "We can better assess the value this technology can bring to the banking industry and the impact it can have on faster and more cost-effective services to our customers for future implementation David E Rutter, CEO of R3, commented, "the addition of the National Bank of Egypt to our ever-growing Corda network enhances our engagement with the global financial industry, particularly in the MENA region. Our partners are developing cutting-edge blockchain applications on Corda that will change the way the world does business." With its membership in the alliance, the NBE will have the opportunity to train its IT talent on R3's enterprise-grade blockchain platform, Corda, and will have access to all research and technical meetings with multinational banks and entities, as well as be able to actively engage in existing blockchain proof of concept projects in different banking applications. The bank will also be able to present a project idea to the alliance to apply the technology in one of the banking services in cooperation with other regional and international banks.
