Dr. Hamza Alakaleek

The Central Bank of Jordan is no longer confined to its traditional roles of protecting the national currency and safeguarding monetary stability. Instead, it is leading a silent revolution in the infrastructure of the national financial system. Over the past two decades, the Bank has steadily built an advanced payments ecosystem, grounded in the adoption of cutting-edge technologies that stimulate economic growth while ensuring efficiency, security, and reliability. Through this sustained effort, Jordan has emerged as one of the region’s most digitally advanced economies in the field of instant payments.

Official reports show that in 2023 the Jordanian banking system processed approximately 126.9 million electronic transactions, with a total value of 69.34 billion dinars. This rapid growth continued in 2024, as transactions conducted through CliQ, JoMoPay, and eFawateercom reached around 27.35 billion dinars during the first eleven months of the year, representing a fifty three percent increase compared to the same period in 2023. The growth of instant transfer transactions by more than 327% reflects a fundamental shift in the financial behavior of Jordanian citizens, as CliQ has become an integral part of daily financial activity.

This success extends to the eFawateercom system, which surpassed 4.15 million users and processed payments worth 11.85 billion dinars in 2024. This digital transformation is not a technological luxury, but rather a strategic tool to enhance financial inclusion, particularly among women, youth, and refugees, in line with the National Financial Inclusion Strategy for 2023–2028. Reducing reliance on cash lowers economic cycle costs and increases transparency of financial flows, directly supporting efforts to combat money laundering and terrorist financing.

In a world where money moves at the speed of electronic signals, cybersecurity becomes the first line of defense for national sovereignty. In this domain, the Central Bank of Jordan has demonstrated exceptional foresight, enabling Jordan to rank first in the Arab world and twentieth globally on the National Cyber Security Index. This achievement was not coincidental, but the result of strict policies and advanced regulatory frameworks.

Jordan also achieved a major leap in the Global Cybersecurity Index of the International Telecommunication Union, advancing forty-four positions to rank twenty seventh worldwide in 2024. Achieving a full score of 100% in three out of five cybersecurity assessment pillars reflects the strength of the digital infrastructure led by the Central Bank through its financial sector cyber incident response team, FinCert.

Equally important are the data governance instructions issued by the Central Bank, aligned with global standards such as the GDPR, which form the cornerstone of financial privacy protection. These instructions impose strict controls on cloud data storage, prohibit service providers from exploiting or transferring data ownership, and require full national digital sovereignty over sensitive financial information. They also mandate cryptographic agility, ensuring that financial institutions can update their security systems to confront future threats.

Looking beyond 2030, the Central Bank is positioning Jordan among countries preparing for the quantum computing revolution. Through the national quantum computing strategy it champions, the Bank aims to shield the banking system from future risks arising from the ability of quantum computers to break traditional encryption systems.

Adopting post quantum cryptography represents a proactive step to protect financial data from harvest now, decrypt later attacks. At the same time, the CBJ is driving transformation in open banking. Jordan was among the first to issue comprehensive regulations allowing fintech companies secure, consent-based access to customer data in order to deliver tailored services. The admission of Fintech Galaxy into the JoRegBox regulatory sandbox in 2025 demonstrates the Bank’s seriousness in fostering an innovation friendly environment that attracts investment and creates high quality employment opportunities for Jordanian youth.

In conclusion, digital indicators and institutional analysis confirm that the Central Bank of Jordan has successfully managed a complex equation: preserving monetary fundamentals while embracing major technological transformations. It has proven that it is not merely a custodian of money, but the organizing mind and primary engine of stability and digital transformation in the Jordanian economy.