Notes from building and running production systems
Mostly the questions founders and engineering teams in Egypt ask me before they hire anyone: which payment gateway to use, what a build actually costs, why the cloud bill keeps climbing, and what the regulator will expect. Written from production work, with the trade-offs left in.
-
Payment gateways in Egypt: Kashier vs Paymob vs Fawry vs Fawaterak vs Geidea
A practical comparison of the five gateways most Egyptian businesses actually shortlist: pricing, settlement timelines, Apple Pay and wallet coverage, integration effort, and where each one is the wrong choice.
read → -
What software development actually costs in Egypt (2026)
Real budget ranges by project type (landing site, e-commerce build, marketplace, mobile app, custom platform), what drives the number up, and what a cheap quote is quietly leaving out.
read → -
Choosing a payment gateway for a marketplace with split payments and deposits
Marketplaces break the assumptions most gateways are built on: money belongs to someone else, deposits are held then partly returned, and payouts have to reconcile. Here's how to pick, and what to build yourself.
read → -
Infrastructure cost audit: why your AWS bill is 40% higher than it should be
The diagnostic method I run on cloud accounts, in order, with the commands. Idle capacity, storage nobody deleted, NAT Gateway, cross-AZ traffic, and the environments still running from a project that ended.
read → -
Security requirements for Egyptian fintech and e-commerce
What CBE licensing, the Financial Cybersecurity Framework, PCI DSS scope, and Egypt's data protection law actually require of a normal engineering team, plus the controls to build before an auditor asks.
read →
Working on one of these problems?
I take short, focused engagements: payment integration, cloud cost and reliability reviews, security audits. Email contact@kerolosxgad.com or read more about how I work.