Abdullah Assal — the Managing Director of Delta Egypt Payments and owner of Sahl Digital Payments — said that Sahl has managed to attract about 500,000 users since the start of its activity in 2020.
He added, in a session with a number of journalists, that Sahl was established in partnership between e-finance, Delta Systems, and Misr Payments to offer the first application for charging prepaid cards for electricity using contactless NFC technology via mobile phones.
Assal revealed that the company plans to expand in African markets starting the second half (2H) of 2023.
He added that the company intends to provide prepaid water metre recharge services before the end of this year.
Sahl’s application was launched in 2020 in conjunction with the COVID-19 pandemic to avoid the spread of infection and fulfil the Egyptian state’s plan to provide all services through digital platforms and mobile applications, as there are more than 30m residential and commercial units that pay their monthly dues through traditional methods.
According to statistics issued by the Ministry of Electricity and Renewable Energy, the total number of subscribers who use prepaid metres was about 12.2m by the end of 2021. The ministry aims to increase its total subscribers to about 38m by 2025 by changing all old metres with prepaid ones.
Sahl is cooperating with a large number of service providers — such as banks and telecommunications companies — to allow payment through electronic wallets, various applications, and bank cards, stressing that it has added more than 50 new payment services. This is to transform the application into a comprehensive platform for all day-to-day payments, including public utilities, cell phone bills, donations, university expenses, and various subscriptions as per the directives of the government — led by the Central Bank of Egypt — to support financial technology and smart applications to improve the cash cycle and reduce the time required to collect payments for the benefit of various government agencies.
Assal added that citizens can go to their electricity distribution company to replace their charging cards for prepaid metres with cards that support the NFC feature or request the card through the application, stressing that the application is the highest in the category of financial applications in Egypt in terms of the level of customer satisfaction.
The application achieved widespread success after the confidence it gained from its users.
