{"id":609903,"date":"2023-11-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-12T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/enterpriseam.com\/egypt\/2023\/11\/12\/this-evening-google-gives-us-two-months-of-breathing-space-on-payments-instapay-to-let-users-send-money-to-uae-jordan-and-ksa-next-year-fawry-has-not-been-the-victim-of-ransomware\/"},"modified":"2023-11-12T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-11-12T00:00:00","slug":"this-evening-google-gives-us-two-months-of-breathing-space-on-payments-instapay-to-let-users-send-money-to-uae-jordan-and-ksa-next-year-fawry-has-not-been-the-victim-of-ransomware","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/enterpriseam.com\/egypt\/2023\/11\/12\/this-evening-google-gives-us-two-months-of-breathing-space-on-payments-instapay-to-let-users-send-money-to-uae-jordan-and-ksa-next-year-fawry-has-not-been-the-victim-of-ransomware\/","title":{"rendered":"THIS EVENING: Google gives us two-months of breathing space on payments + Instapay to let users send money to UAE, Jordan and KSA next year + Fawry has not been the victim of ransomware"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hello, wonderful people. <\/strong>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: <\/p>\n

PSA- ?\ufe0f Take it easy this afternoon (and early evening) on the drive home \u2014 there\u2019s a <\/strong>chance <\/strong>of rain. <\/strong>We\u2019ve 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<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

BIG FX STORY #1-<\/strong><\/p>\n

BIG THANKS this afternoon to the good people at Google<\/strong>, who we will credit with living up to the company\u2019s (former) \u201cDon\u2019t be evil\u201d mantra<\/a> on this overcast day after the tech giant gave some clients in Egypt a two-month grace period on payments. <\/p>\n

The problem: Many Egyptian businesses are at risk of losing critical infrastructure <\/strong>including access to email, documents, and cloud hosting <\/strong>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. <\/p>\n

What\u2019s the big deal? <\/strong>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.<\/p>\n

With card payments bouncing because of the new FX limit, admins are being bombarded <\/strong>with cutoff notices from service providers. <\/strong>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. <\/p>\n

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

What Google said in a note to Enterprise: <\/strong>\u201cSince mid-October, Egyptian banks have been declining credit and debit card transactions from offshore merchants such as Google Cloud\u2026 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<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is there anything else you can do? <\/strong>In descending order of madness (craziest at the top):<\/p>\n