Payment Processing · Buyer guide
Egypt has no published cap on what a business pays to take a card, a Meeza card or a mobile-wallet payment. What it does have is a short list of online gateways that print a price, and a much longer list of banks and acquirers that quote one. On the providers' own Egyptian pages, read on 2 November 2026, published online card rates run from 2.5% + EGP 2 to 2.75% + EGP 3 a payment. Only one provider we read publishes a rate for card terminals.
This guide covers those prices, what Egyptian law says about taking non-cash payments and charging extra for them, how InstaPay's fees work, and how VAT is treated. Every price below comes from the provider's own Egyptian page.
Egypt's main statute here is Law No. 18 of 2019 regulating the use of non-cash payment methods. Its executive regulations were issued by Prime Minister Decree No. 1776 of 2020; the Central Bank of Egypt lists both on its laws page. The Central Bank's National Payments Council describes the law as a binding framework for electronic payments in both the public and private sectors.
Most of the law is about how organisations pay out: state bodies, and private employers above set staff or payroll thresholds, must pay salaries by non-cash means, and covered organisations must pay suppliers and similar amounts above set limits the same way. On the collection side, Article 4 obliges state bodies, and legal persons and establishments that provide public services or run public utilities, to offer non-cash payment at every point where they collect payment, without additional cost. The one exception it allows is a charge for delivering the service to the customer. Article 5 makes certain receipts above set limits collectable only by non-cash means, among them taxes, customs duties, fees and fines, insurance premiums, and payments that state bodies and other covered organisations receive for selling or renting land, property or vehicles.
That leaves an ordinary shop or online store in a grey area. Law 18 does not, in the text we read, require every private retailer to accept cards, and its no-extra-cost rule is written for public services rather than for every merchant. We found no Central Bank of Egypt rule that either bans or permits a card surcharge at a private business. Your acquirer's contract and the card schemes' rules may restrict it, so check your agreement before adding one.
The Central Bank sets the wider framework. Law No. 194 of 2020, the Central Bank and Banking Sector Law, provides in Article 50 for the National Payments Council, which is chaired by the President. The Council lists among its results the Meeza national card scheme, which it says handles most government payments; the Instant Payment Network and its InstaPay app; Tap on Phone acceptance, which lets a merchant take cards on a smartphone or tablet; and decrees to cut the fees of mobile payment services. It publishes no merchant fee cap for any of them.
Three payment companies publish a per-transaction price on an Egyptian page. All three quote a percentage plus a fixed fee in Egyptian pounds. Paymob and Kashier say they charge no monthly fee; PayTabs's Egyptian page lists none.
Several large acquirers publish nothing. We could not load Geidea's Egyptian pricing page (our grade: B-) after two attempts, so we have no published Geidea rate for Egypt. Network International's Egypt page would not load, and we found no Egyptian rate for it. Fawry, the bill-payment and acceptance network, publishes no merchant rate on its site. Checkout.com's pricing page describes flat-rate and interchange++ pricing set by business profile and gives no figures.
Stripe (our grade: A) is not an option for an Egyptian company. Egypt is not on Stripe's global availability list, which does include the United Arab Emirates.
Take an online shop with 300 orders a month at EGP 500 each, so EGP 150,000 of local card sales. On the published rates, before VAT:
The fixed fee matters more than the percentage on small orders. On a EGP 100 order, 2.75% + EGP 3 costs EGP 5.75, or 5.75% of the sale, while 2.5% + EGP 2 costs EGP 4.50. PayTabs moves to bespoke pricing above EGP 250,000 a month, and Paymob and Kashier both offer custom enterprise rates to high-volume merchants, so treat the published rate as a ceiling to negotiate down from.
In-person pricing is far less public. Paymob is the only provider whose Egyptian terminal rates we could read, and only in a turnover calculator on its pricing page, labelled "Transaction rate ex. VAT": 2.5% up to EGP 25,000 of monthly turnover, 2.25% from EGP 25,000 to 40,000, 2% from EGP 40,000 to 65,000 and 1.75% above EGP 65,000. Those figures sit in the calculator's data, which was last updated in January 2021, not in the page's text, and Paymob's POS page states no rate, so get the terminal rate confirmed in writing. Kashier says POS hardware is priced separately by sales. We found no published merchant tariff for card terminals from the National Bank of Egypt, Banque Misr or CIB.
Payout timing differs by channel. Paymob's pricing page says online money is settled to your bank account weekly, while its POS page promises "guaranteed daily settlements" for terminal sales. Kashier offers scheduled settlements to any Egyptian bank and says faster settlement may be priced separately. PayTabs advertises settlement in local currency but does not publish a payout schedule for Egypt.
InstaPay is the Central Bank-backed instant transfer app built on the Instant Payment Network. Its own site lists a transfer fee of 0.1% of the amount, with a minimum of EGP 0.50 and a maximum of EGP 20, in force since 1 April 2025. Balance and mini-statement checks are free 10 times a month and EGP 0.50 each after that. Transfers are limited to EGP 70,000 each, EGP 120,000 a day and EGP 400,000 a month per bank. These are listed as fees for app users making transfers; the site lists no separate fee for a business receiving one.
For Meeza cards and mobile wallets, no provider we read publishes a merchant rate. Kashier and PayTabs both show Meeza among accepted methods, and Kashier says wallet rates are quoted by sales. If those methods matter to your customers, get them priced in writing before you sign.
PayPal (our grade: A-) is the usual route for an Egyptian seller paid by foreign buyers, and its prices sit on a different basis from the local gateways above, so do not compare them directly. On PayPal's Egyptian fee page, an Egypt-based seller receiving an international commercial payment pays 4.40% plus a fixed fee, which is USD 0.30 on a payment in US dollars. Converting a balance or a payment received in another currency costs 3.0%, and each withdrawal to an Egyptian bank account in pounds costs EGP 125. A USD 100 sale therefore costs USD 4.70 before conversion and withdrawal.
Check the VAT basis before comparing quotes. Egypt's standard VAT rate is 14%. Kashier says its fees exclude VAT and that it charges 14% VAT on the fee only. Paymob labels its terminal calculator as excluding VAT but does not say either way for its online rate, and PayTabs's Egyptian page does not say either way. On a 2.75% + EGP 3 rate, 14% VAT on the fee, as Kashier charges it, lifts the effective cost of a EGP 1,000 sale from EGP 30.50 to about EGP 34.77.
For a small online seller, the published rates bunch closely: 2.5% + EGP 2 to 2.75% + EGP 3, before VAT. PayTabs is cheapest on paper in its Growth band, while Paymob and Kashier charge the same rate and both say there is no monthly fee. Paymob is the only one whose terminal rates we could find, in its pricing-page calculator. Ask any provider for three things in writing: the rate for Meeza and wallets, whether the quote includes VAT, and how often you are paid.
