Accepting online payments in Egypt: Fawry vs Paymob vs InstaPay vs cash

By Youssef Mahmoud Soliman, founder of YMS Studio · Updated 28 July 2026

The short version

There is no best payment provider in Egypt. There is the one your customers already trust, and the one your bank account can live with. Most founders only ask the first. Fawry, Paymob, InstaPay and cash on delivery each solve a different part of the problem, and a store doing real volume usually runs two or three side by side. One thing before the comparison: a new payment method is not a new sale. If your checkout is slow or confusing, a better gateway will not rescue it. Egyptians abandon carts for the usual reasons plus a local one — they do not recognise the payment screen, so they do not trust it.

Start with how your customers already pay

Egypt has roughly four rails. Cards, which skew towards higher-income urban buyers who have shopped online before. Mobile wallets, Vodafone Cash and its equivalents on the other networks, which reach far more people because they need only a phone number. Cash at a kiosk, handed to a person behind a counter. And cash to the courier at the door, still the default for a very large share of Egyptian orders. A Cairo boutique selling a 3,000 EGP jacket and a Giza kitchen selling a 180 EGP order are not solving the same problem. Choose after you know who is buying from you.

Fawry: cash that behaves like a card

Fawry turns cash into an online payment. At checkout the customer picks Fawry, gets a reference number on screen and by SMS, then walks to a pharmacy, a grocery, a kiosk or a Fawry machine and hands over the money quoting that number. Your system receives a confirmation and you ship. For the buyer with no card, or no trust in typing one, that is the whole unlock. People who have never bought anything online have still paid an electricity bill through Fawry.

The trade-off is the gap. Between order and payment the customer can simply not go to the shop, so you carry unpaid reservations and expiring references. You also pay per transaction rather than a clean percentage, and the structure differs across the gateway, bill payment and instalments. Rates move and are negotiated merchant by merchant, so treat any number from a Facebook group as fiction and confirm yours directly with Fawry.

Paymob: the checkout most Egyptian stores end up on

Paymob is the closest thing Egypt has to a default gateway. One integration gives you cards, mobile wallets, instalments and usually a cash option, behind a hosted checkout page or an embedded frame you can style. The customer sees a card form or a wallet prompt on their phone, then returns to your site. Fees follow the usual structure: a percentage per transaction plus a fixed amount, with different rates for cards, wallets and instalments. Current rates are published on their own pricing page, the only number worth quoting. Ask specifically about instalments if you sell above a few thousand pounds — they carry a heavier cut, and they are also why many Egyptian carts convert at all.

InstaPay, wallets, and the transfer people already use

InstaPay runs on the Central Bank's instant payment network, moving money account to account in seconds at any hour. The appeal is obvious: near-zero cost against card rails, and the money genuinely lands rather than queueing for settlement. But it was built for transfers, not checkout. Sending a customer to their banking app to type your handle and an amount is not a payment flow, it is manual reconciliation for whoever holds the company phone. Read InstaPay's own pages and the Central Bank of Egypt for what the network does.

Vodafone Cash and the other network wallets have the same enormous reach outside the card-holding population, and they confirm automatically when they run through a gateway. Trouble starts when a wallet or InstaPay is run off the books: a WhatsApp screenshot, a manual check, a payment missed on a busy day. Fine at ten orders a month. Not a system.

Cash on delivery, and what it actually costs

Cash on delivery still dominates for one honest reason: the customer carries no risk. They see the box, they hand over the money, done. In a market where plenty of people have been burned by an Instagram page that never shipped, that is not irrational. Turning COD off to look modern is the fastest way to lose the customers you have not earned yet.

But it is not free, and the cost hides in four places. Returns and refusals: the customer changes their mind at the door and you have paid both legs on an order now worth nothing. Failed deliveries: wrong address, phone off, nobody home in a Cairo building with no lift, and the courier goes back tomorrow at your expense. Cash handling: your courier holds your money, remits on their own cycle, and you reconcile by hand. Tied-up stock: every unpaid order in transit is inventory nobody else can buy.

So do not kill COD. Price it. Add a handling fee on cash orders or discount prepaid ones, and let the customer see the difference. Confirm on WhatsApp before dispatch, which cuts refusals more than anything else you can do. Tighten your zones so a driver is not crossing Cairo for one order — Beef Point delivers fresh-cut meat across Cairo and Giza on exactly that logic. And track your refusal rate as a number, because until it is a number nobody is fixing it.

Settlement, and why it decides your cash flow

The fee gets all the attention. Settlement matters more. It is the gap between the customer paying and the money reaching your bank account, and in Egypt it runs from roughly a day to roughly a week depending on the provider, your contract, your risk profile, and whether a weekend or public holiday falls inside it. Nobody advertises this number. Ask for it in writing. If you buy stock weekly and settle in seven days, you are permanently financing a week of trading out of your own pocket. Ramadan and Eid stretch it at exactly the moment volume peaks and you need cash to restock.

What you need before anyone will switch you on

Payment providers in Egypt onboard businesses, not individuals. Expect to produce your commercial registration (السجل التجاري), your tax card (البطاقة الضريبية), a bank account in the company's name, the national ID or passport of the owner or authorised signatory, and sometimes a lease or a utility bill for the registered address. If you are selling from a personal account and a personal page, this is the step that stops you, so start the paperwork before you start the build.

You will also be asked what you sell, because some categories are refused or priced differently for chargeback risk. Be straight about it at the start rather than at launch. Have a live or staging URL to show, and publish your refund and delivery policies, because providers do check that the store is real. This is a common reason a launch slips: the site is finished and the merchant account is not.

Which one suits which business

A service business or a coach taking bookings: card plus a wallet option is enough, and prepaid is realistic because the customer is buying your time, not a box. CMYH went from an Instagram bio link to a real checkout and was booked out within a month. A physical-goods store shipping across Egypt: card, wallet and COD, with prepaid nudged along by a discount. A restaurant, or anything with a low average order: COD and wallets carry the volume, and the margin fight there is with the aggregator commission, not the gateway fee.

Selling to the Gulf as well as Egypt: you need an international gateway beside the local one, because a Saudi or Emirati buyer will not use Fawry. That is a two-gateway build, and the platform you choose decides how painful it is. B2B with large invoices: bank transfer, with InstaPay for the smaller ones. Do not pay a card percentage on a six-figure invoice.

What to check before you sign

Ask for the whole cost in writing, not the headline rate: percentage, fixed fee per transaction, setup, monthly minimum, refund fee, dispute fee, and what happens to the fee when you refund an order. Ask what the settlement period is and whether it changes over holidays. Ask who carries a disputed transaction. Ask whether your rate is promotional and when it moves.

Then check the technical side, where money actually leaks. You want a real API and webhooks, not an email notification, so orders reconcile themselves. You want a checkout that stays on your domain, in Arabic with correct right-to-left layout, because one that flips to English mid-flow loses people. And you want it fast on a mid-range Android over patchy mobile data — a payment step that hangs is an abandoned cart, and Core Web Vitals matter on checkout more than anywhere else.

This is the part we build. At YMS we wire Fawry, Paymob, wallets and cash on delivery into stores that are bilingual from the first line, whose code you own outright, and which reconcile themselves instead of through somebody's phone. A custom store is typically six to twelve weeks from kickoff to live. That is where a Cairo studio building custom stores starts: with a free tailored mockup, not a contract.

Frequently asked questions

Fawry or Paymob — which one should I use?

They are not really competitors in the way the question implies. Paymob is a gateway: one integration giving you cards, wallets, instalments and usually a cash option. Fawry is best understood as the cash rail, the one that lets someone with no card pay you at a kiosk, and it is a full payment company in its own right. Most serious Egyptian stores run a gateway for cards and wallets and keep a cash reference option on, because switching cash off removes buyers you never see.

Can I take InstaPay payments on my website?

Not as a normal checkout step, no. InstaPay is a bank-to-bank transfer network, so the customer leaves your site, opens their banking app and sends the money, and you match that transfer to an order by hand. Workable at ten orders a month, unmanageable at a hundred. If bank transfer is genuinely a large channel, keep it as a manual channel with a named person responsible for reconciling it, and put cards and wallets through a proper gateway so most orders confirm themselves.

Do I need a commercial registration and tax card to accept online payments in Egypt?

For a proper merchant account, yes. Expect to provide commercial registration, a tax card, a bank account in the business's name, and identification for the owner or authorised signatory, sometimes with a lease or utility bill for the registered address. Providers also review what you sell, because some categories carry higher chargeback risk. Start this paperwork early — it is one of the most common reasons a finished website sits waiting to launch.

Should I still offer cash on delivery in Egypt?

Yes, in almost every physical-goods business. It is still the method that removes all risk from the buyer, and switching it off to look modern loses you the customers who have not learned to trust you yet. What you should do is price it honestly: a small handling fee on cash orders or a discount on prepaid ones, WhatsApp confirmation before dispatch to cut refusals, disciplined delivery zones, and a refusal rate you actually track. COD is a cost you manage, not a habit you ban.

How long does it take to get paid?

Settlement in Egypt generally runs from about a day to about a week, depending on the provider, your contract, your risk profile, and whether a weekend or public holiday falls inside the window. It is rarely advertised, so ask for it in writing before you sign. If you restock weekly, a seven-day settlement means permanently financing a week of trading yourself, and Ramadan and Eid stretch it at exactly the moment volume peaks.

Keep reading

• Shopify vs WooCommerce vs a custom store in Egypt
• what a restaurant website in Egypt actually needs
• the e-commerce guide
• Beef Point — fresh-cut meat across Cairo and Giza
• start a project