News

Mobile App Helps Turkish Women Fight Domestic Violence

The app has so far been downloaded over 20,000 times, and more than 30 women have used it to seek help.

Published

5 years ago

November 14, 2021

mobile app helps turkish women fight domestic violence

It’s estimated that 1 in 4 women globally have experienced severe domestic violence in their lifetime. For a number of complex reasons, the prevalence of domestic violence is especially high in the Eastern Mediterranean region.

Now, the Turkish Ministry of Interior is trying to use modern technology to help women threatened with domestic violence find help before it’s too late. The government ministry office released an app called KADES (Turkish acronym for Emergency Support Hotline for Women), which makes it easy for women to discretely report potential threats to the police.

“This application seeks to ensure women reach our police forces and receive help when under any threat, with just one touch,” explained Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu. “In any dangerous situation, women can connect to the system at the touch of a button, which will automatically send details of their location to the police”.

According to government statistics, the app has so far been downloaded over 20,000 times, and more than 30 women have used it to seek help. On average, the police arrived in just 5 minutes. The number is so low because the app automatically determines where the distressed woman is located and makes the information available to the police.

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The Turkish Ministry of Interior would like to see initiatives like KADES help wipe out violence against women completely. “Our President [Recep Tayyip Erdoğan] says ‘abuse and violence on women is the biggest crime inflicted upon humanity’. We will continue our efforts until this shame is completely wiped out of our country,” said the minister.

However, government officials in Turkey are well aware that achieving such a lofty goal is extremely difficult and will require a multi-pronged approach, as well as a lot of time. In October 2021 alone, 18 women were killed across Turkey, and the number of less serious incidents is impossible to calculate because many of them go unreported.

News

Egypt’s Mobile Wallets Are Booming, But Cash Still Has Power

Egypt’s telecom regulator says $57.6 billion moved through more than 57 million wallets in six months. And one operator handled 77% of the value.

Published

4 days ago

September 12, 2026

Nour Nasir

egypt's mobile wallets are booming but cash still has power

Egypt’s mobile wallets handled EGP 2.96 trillion ($57.6 billion) in transactions in the first half of 2026, according to the National Telecom Regulatory Authority – a 56% rise on the EGP 1.90 trillion ($36.9 billion) recorded a year earlier. Transactions grew faster still, up 62% to 2.22 billion, while registered wallets climbed 23% to 57.01 million.

On one reading, that is exactly what Egypt’s regulators have been pushing for: a payments system that runs through telecom-linked wallets rather than banknotes. But the same data shows how far cash still reaches into it. Cash withdrawals made up just 12% of the transactions taking money out of wallets, yet 75% of the value withdrawn or spent.

Money arrives mostly from bank accounts: transfers through InstaPay accounted for 78% of deposit transactions and 58% of the value deposited, while incoming remittances from abroad made up 3% of deposit transactions but 10% of their value. Once inside, it largely moves between wallets – wallet-to-wallet transfers accounted for 54% of all transactions and 67% of total value, with mobile and internet top-ups a distant second at 25% of volume. In effect, the wallet is serving as a transfer layer: the place money passes through between the bank account and the banknote.

That layer also runs predominantly through one operator. Vodafone Cash held 53% of registered wallets and 57% of active ones, but handled 69% of transactions and 77% of their value. Its nearest rival, e& money, held 23% of registered wallets but 14% of transaction value; Orange Cash 20% and 8%; WE Pay 4% of wallets. How many of the 57.01 million are active is not stated.

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Adoption is rather uneven in other respects. Men held 38 million wallets, or 67% of the total, against 19 million held by women. Users aged 26 to 45 accounted for half of all wallets, and Cairo alone had 10.6 million, or 19% of the national total, with Giza next at 6.5 million.

The NTRA says it is continuing to work with telecom operators on the regulatory framework for wallet services, part of a wider effort to expand electronic payments and financial inclusion. Its own figures show that effort succeeding on the way in. On the way out, three-quarters of the value still leaves as cash.