How gateway pricing works in Egypt
Most online card pricing in Egypt has two parts: a percentage of the order and a fixed fee per transaction. Kashier publishes 2.75% + EGP 3 per online card transaction with no setup or monthly fee, and 14% VAT is charged on the fee, not on the whole order. Paymob’s online card rate is widely reported at around the same 2.75% + EGP 3, but confirm it directly with Paymob before you plan around it.
Fawry and Geidea quote rates per merchant instead of publishing them, so you will need to ask for an offer. Wallet and buy-now-pay-later rates are usually priced separately from cards and are negotiable. Ask for each method’s rate in writing so you can compare like for like.
Work out your effective rate
The headline percentage hides the effect of the fixed fee. Take a 120 EGP order at 2.75% + EGP 3: the percentage is 3.30 EGP and the fixed fee is 3 EGP, so the fee is 6.30 EGP, about 5.25% of the order. Add 14% VAT on the fee (about 0.88 EGP) and you pay roughly 7.18 EGP, close to 6%.
On a 600 EGP order the same pricing gives 16.50 + 3 = 19.50 EGP, about 3.25%, or roughly 22.23 EGP (about 3.7%) with VAT on the fee. The larger the basket, the closer you get to the headline percentage.
In practice, if most of your orders are small, a bundle offer or a minimum basket for card payment can do more for your margin than negotiating a fraction of a point off the percentage. Compare providers using your real average order value, not the advertised rate.
- Fee = order value × percentage + fixed fee
- VAT = fee × 14% (as in Kashier’s published pricing)
- Effective rate = (fee + VAT) ÷ order value
Get the payment mix right
Egyptian buyers do not all pay the same way. Industry estimates put cash on delivery plus bank transfer at about 34% of e-commerce payment value in 2025, down from an estimated 60–70% about five years earlier. That is a big shift, but it still means a large share of value is paid in cash or by transfer.
Digital rails are growing quickly. InstaPay passed 16 million users and Meeza digital wallets reached 55.5 million by June 2025, according to Central Bank of Egypt figures as reported. Offering wallets and InstaPay transfers gives buyers who have no card, or who prefer not to use one online, a way to prepay.
COD is still worth offering, but it carries risk. Industry estimates put COD refusal around 12–18%, and one estimate puts returns at 15–25% of COD orders against 5–8% for prepaid orders; reliable public data is limited. A small incentive for prepaying, or a deposit on high-value orders, can move some buyers off COD without losing them.
For manual transfers and InstaPay, decide in advance how you will match each payment to its order. A reference code on every order and a screenshot of the transfer save a lot of back-and-forth.
Questions to ask before you sign
Price is only part of the contract. Settlement and reconciliation decide how many hours your team spends each week and how much cash is tied up. Ask every provider the same questions and get the answers in writing.
Reconciliation is where small stores lose money quietly. Every week, match three numbers: orders marked paid in your store, transactions in the gateway report, and money that actually arrived in your bank. Differences usually come from refunds, fees or a payment attached to the wrong order.
- What is the rate for each method: cards, wallets, installments or BNPL, and any others?
- Is VAT charged on the fee, and is it shown separately on the statement?
- How many days after a transaction is money settled to my bank, and is there a minimum payout?
- Are refunds charged, and is the original fee returned when I refund?
- How are chargebacks and disputes handled, and what do they cost?
- Can I download a settlement report that lists each transaction with its order reference?
- Are there setup, monthly or annual fees, and what notice do I give to leave?
- Which card types and currencies are accepted, including international cards?
Running several gateways from one dashboard
Many merchants end up with more than one provider: one for cards, another for wallets or installments, plus COD collected by couriers. Vondera’s VPay connects 10+ gateways including Fawry, Geidea, Kashier, Paymob, Paytabs and XPay, and supports mobile wallets, Visa and Mastercard, Apple Pay, COD, manual transfer with a proof-of-payment screenshot, and deposit or partial payments.
Every payment is tied to its order, which makes the weekly reconciliation above much simpler. VPay has its own transaction fee of 5% on the Launch plan, 4% on Growth and 3% on Scale, so include it in your effective-rate sheet and confirm how gateway fees are billed alongside it.