Hello, wonderful people. We hope Sunday has been good to you. We have an FX-heavy issue for you as the workday draws to a close, but first:

PSA- ?️ Take it easy this afternoon (and early evening) on the drive home — there’s a chance of rain. We’ve seen isolated showers across the capital city this afternoon, and our favorite weather app is calling for occasional drizzle and a risk of scattered thunderstorms from now through tomorrow afternoon.

BIG FX STORY #1-

BIG THANKS this afternoon to the good people at Google, who we will credit with living up to the company’s (former) “Don’t be evil” mantra on this overcast day after the tech giant gave some clients in Egypt a two-month grace period on payments.

The problem: Many Egyptian businesses are at risk of losing critical infrastructure including access to email, documents, and cloud hosting after the Central Bank of Egypt guided banks to limit foreign exchange transactions on credit cards to the USD, EUR or other FX equivalent of EGP 7,750 per month.

What’s the big deal? Most SMEs (and some larger businesses we know) use credit cards to pay for access to Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Amazon Web Services, and other critical corporate tools and tech infrastructure.

With card payments bouncing because of the new FX limit, admins are being bombarded with cutoff notices from service providers. Most offer a warning that you have an (unspecified, but highly limited) period of time to set things right. Others are cutting businesses off after just one or two failed attempts.

Enter Google, which has sent notices to Egyptian clients paying with local credit cards that they have been given a two-month extension on payments that were due in recent weeks.

What Google said in a note to Enterprise: “Since mid-October, Egyptian banks have been declining credit and debit card transactions from offshore merchants such as Google Cloud… To minimize disruption to you and your organization during this time, we are extending your Workspace services without interruption until January 2024 regardless of declined transactions.”

Is there anything else you can do? In descending order of madness (craziest at the top):

  • Hope everything magically resolves itself;
  • Open an offshore account and develop a foreign-currency revenue stream;
  • Sort out whether you qualify for monthly invoiced billing (Google and other providers do this, but not everyone is eligible. Criteria vary by provider.);
  • Contact a local reseller and see if you can get a new contract payable in EGP (at a rate, and with a markup, that will probably make your eyes water — but at least you’ll still be in business).

BIG FX STORY #2-

InstaPay plans to offer remittance services to Egyptians living in the UAE, Jordan and KSA next year. The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) has reached preliminary agreements with the central banks of the UAE and Jordan — and is in advanced talks with the central bank in Saudi Arabia — to allow InstaPay users to transfer money from banks in these countries to their Egyptian bank accounts, a source with firsthand knowledge of the matter told Enterprise. The CBE-run digital payment platform is expected to roll out the services in 1H 2024, our source added. The CBE is still studying whether remittances transferred via InstaPay will be credited to Egyptian accounts in local or foreign currency. The news was first picked up by Asharq Business.

All in the name of easing our FX crunch: The plan is the latest in a string of measures taken by the government to drum up hard currency in response to the ongoing FX crunch, which has triggered three devaluations of the EGP since March 2022 and caused the EGP to halve in value against the USD.

Remember: It first came to light back in Septemberthat the central bank was looking into allowing InstaPay transfers from the three Arab countries, in addition to members of the Brics bloc.

MEANWHILE, FAWRY IS BACK UP-

Fawry’s operations dashboard is all green after a service outage on Thursday that coincided with claims on social media by two cybersecurity monitoring accounts that the payments giant had been hit by a LockBit ransomware attack.

All Fawry services are up and running — and a couple of us have today paid bills using the service. The company said in a statement this weekend that it had not been hacked and that an external audit by a global cybersecurity firm, Group-IB, found no evidence its systems had been breached.

SOUND SMART- LockBit is a group of hackers that has used a set of ingenious software tools in recent months to hack some of the largest financial institutions in the world — including the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, one of the world’s largest banks. LockBit is one of the planet’s most active (and most successful) ransomware groups. Analysts believe the group originated in Russia.

Uh, what’s ransomware? Boiled down, it’s malicious code that locks you out of a device, database, or entire system until a ransom is paid.

Want to go deeper? Have a look at reports and backgrounders from Reuters | Wired and TheVerge. Want to go more into the how? Take a look at this piece from Flashpoint or this one from the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

How can you protect yourself and your company? NO. NOT. CLICK. ON. ANYTHING. SUSPICIOUS.

THE BIG STORY ABROAD-

It’s all about Gaza, where little has changed since we checked in with you this morning. The latest update is that the IDF is reportedly helping Palestinian babies leave Al Shifa hospital after denying that they have attacked the medical facility but Gaza health ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qidra disclosed that the IDF was terrorizing both doctors and civilians. (Reuters | CNBC)

** CATCH UP QUICK on the top stories from today’s EnterpriseAM:

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*** It’s Inside Industry day —your weekly briefing of all things industrial in Egypt. Inside Industry focuses each Sunday on what it takes to turn Egypt into a manufacturing and export powerhouse, ranging from initial investment and planning to product distribution, through to land allocation to industrial processes, supply chain management, labor, automation and technology, inputs and exports, regulation and policy.

In today’s issue:We look at Egypt’s furniture industry, with a focus on the current challenges and how to bank on the tools at hand to keep it thriving.

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