The amazing thing is that the banking system works. Nevertheless, it is still difficult to have money transferred quickly. On one occasion we wanted money transferred from our account at the Bank of Alexandria branch in Cairo to the Bank of Alexandria branch in Wadi Natrun. Even though it was really the same bank company, it still took a full week for the transfer to go through. Credit cards are not very common in Egypt and neither are checks.
Most people carry around large amounts of cash to make their purchases.
And people are fairly particular about the cash that they accept. On payday at the excavation site our workers will sometimes refuse to take a bill that has a rip in the corner. In the US we have a large middle class. What we mean by this is that there are a large number of people who are neither very rich nor very poor. There are some very wealthy Egyptians and there are a lot of poor Egyptians.