The Client
Arab International Bank (AIB) was established by an international treaty in 1974, especially designed to provide a wide range of services through its branch's network: The bank operates seven branches in Egypt, including five in Cairo, one in Alexandria and one in Port Said. AIB offers wholesale, retail and investment banking and has traditionally focused on providing banking services and facilities to domestic and regional banks through a network of correspondent banks. It accepts deposits from individuals, companies and institutions, while the bulk of its direct lending has been to finance foreign trade. AIB also frequently participates in US dollar denominated syndicated loans.

The bank has been awarded the 1995 and 1999 EEC Euromarket Award and the certificate of honor by the EMRC in Brussels for its outstanding banking service quality, management accomplishment and potential for growth in respect to the European market along with its initiatives at integrating within the global economy.

The Challenge
AIB's main strategy is to play an active role in international trade and foreign exchange transactions capitalizing on establishing treaties, and in many cases, playing an intermediary role between banks in Egypt and banks abroad.

AIB needed to diversify the issuing and processing of credit cards and debit cards for the network of 19 correspondent banks, as well as provide the Bank's 50,000 card holders with a robust EFT system. AIB also faced multiple participants working in different currencies and the facilitation of migrating all of the participants to one system.

The Solution
The bank adopted Euronet Integrated Transaction Management (ITM) in February 1999 to integrate their back office system with Credit Card Management, Debit Card Management and ATM Management including GUI modules such as manual posting entry, workstation authorization, batch payment entry, merchant draft entry and application tracking. AIB is also using Euronet software for the gateway to Visa and MasterCard credit and debit card services to its participants. These solutions enabled AIB to respond to their customers' needs as well as supply their 19 participants with an integrated system that offers multiple currencies to all participants.

The Results
Through the success of Euronet's solutions, AIB was able to add participants to their network as well as offering new facilities and products to existing and new customers. The implementation also brings more demand from the 19 banks to adopt new products such as ATM driving.

"Since we are an offshore bank that is not allowed to work in the local currency, we rely on Euronet's solutions to provide multiple currency options that make it easy on our bank participants," said Monsef Ali, AIB deputy general manager, head of IT and card center. "Having one centralized system for all corresponding banks allows AIB the flexibility of providing a diverse set of solutions to our customer and network base."