Members News

By Hazem Mulhim

Among the orange groves deep in the fertile Jordan Valley region of Ghor, Tabqet Fahel Shaikh Hussein , Ms. Amena explains how she and her family have benefited from a charitable project that funded a practical course on the breeding of honey bees. As she does so, she leans over one of the 30 hives that dot the local landscape, takes out a tray dripping with honey and covered with buzzing bees, and inspects the progress. With the honey from the hives, she has been able to generate a sustainable income in these most challenging times.

But more than this, she has been able to help her local community. Beehive management is a critical part of the region’s agricultural ecosystem: the bees not only produce honey but also facilitate the pollination of crops in the valley. Normally, the hives are moved from the valley floor to higher ground, where the bees can avoid the heat of summer and pollinate new crops. But this all but stopped at the start of the lockdown associated with the global coronavirus pandemic, devastating the local population of bees and threatening to damage the local economy. By intervening at this critical time, by moving the hives to higher ground and teaching farmers like Ms. Amena  the rudiments of beekeeping, the charitable project played a vital role.

The project is just one of many supported by the Rewell Society, a charitable foundation started thirty years ago by my father, Mohammed Ayyash Mulhim, who was a lawyer and businessman who spent his life standing up for the vulnerable and downtrodden in society. Back in 1992, the charity was called the Rehabilitation and Welfare Society. I changed the name when I became chairman after my father’s death in 2015 in order to reflect the charity’s strategy of helping poor, disadvantaged Jordanians find wellness and empowerment through work. But the animating principle remains the same: it is better to give people the tools for succeeding in the long term than to dole out cash to them for spending in the short term because once they have the skills, they never lose them—whereas if they only have some cash handouts, they soon come back for more.

As I explain in a chapter entitled “Why I Do What I Do” in my new book, Two Brown Envelopes, the work of the Rewell Society is very personal to me—and not only because my father launched the charity. Eastnets, the technology company I founded forty years ago, is the Society’s main corporate partner. Every year, Eastnets donates funds, and many employees pledge a portion of their annual salary. We make these contributions because, to a significant degree, the work of the charity is an extension of what we do in our day-to-day work. In a sense, the business and the charity are two side of the same coin. At Eastnets, our core purpose—as a global provider of compliance, payment and cloud solutions to ten per cent of the world’s banks—is to give people the tools to connect with each other and to participate in the global economy. In a different way, that’s precisely what the Rewell Society does, too.

Over the years, Rewell has provided more than forty thousand poor and underprivileged Jordanians with the vocational skills—the tools—they need to succeed in this fast-changing, increasingly digital world. More recently, there has been a particular focus on helping women in the Jordan valley participate in the local economy—in particular, supporting entrepreneurial projects related to farming activities such as cattle-rearing and, as I’ve mentioned, beehive management. Now, we are starting to expand the work of the charity, and to do this, we have built a crowdfunding website that allows people to co-fund projects with. Currently, there are 20 projects at various stages of fundraising—including a recycling project (turning discarded plastic containers, paper and metals into profitable new products), a fish farming project, and a hydroponics farming project (where plants are raised in water rather than soil). In due course, we plan to turn the website into an ecommerce hub where participating farmers can sell their produce to buyers across Jordan.

At Rewell, we don’t just donate money. Instead, we take a venture capital approach to every project. Each supported family is given a sum of money, say 1,000 Jordanian dinars (about $1,400), that must be used for very specific purposes: the purchase of some agricultural machinery or some seeds. In a very real sense, this is seed corn funding. Then, the families have to pass certain milestones, and only after this will they receive a further injection of funds. And finally, when they come to sell their products—say, some honey—they must give 20 per cent of the proceeds to the charity, which then reinvests the money in other projects.

By introducing this partial payback mechanism, we hope to raise the funds to help many more people like Ms.Amena  in the years ahead. Indeed, we hope to free thousands of people from the curse of poverty and create a generation of self-reliant, entrepreneurially-minded farmers across the Jordan Valley.

If we can do this at Rewell, we will fulfil a purpose shared with Eastnets: to give people the tools (the equipment, the skills and the confidence) they need to participate in the global economy.

Eastnets’ Founder and CEO Hazem Mulhim’s new book, Two Brown Envelopes: How to Shrug Off Setbacks, Bounce Back from Failure, and Build a Global Business (Houndstooth Press, 2022) is now available on Amazon and Rakuten Kobo.

OFFTEC Holding Group launches its new website in cllaboration with Echo Technology under the domain www.offtecholding.com  following the latest website design and development technologies to provide information in a clear, easy to navigate, and modern way to the audience.

OFFTEC Holding Group is a Jordanian holding company, Established in Jerusalem in 1910 that combines unparalleled experience and comprehensive capabilities across many fields, including business technology solutions, consumer finance, and architectural lighting.

As a widely diversified group, OHG’s committed professionals specialize in various domains. With a long-established reputation and throughout our years of success, OFFTEC Holding Group has established strong partnerships with best-in-class suppliers from across the world in our different fields of expertise.

During the General Assembly meeting of the Jordan Payments and Clearing Company (JoPACC), held on May 9, 2022, and presided by the Governor of the Central Bank of Jordan, His Excellency Dr. Adel Sharkas, the Board of Directors’ elections took place following the end of the current board term, which lasted from 2019 to 2022. Consequently, the newly elected board will serve for three years. (2025-2022)

The General Assembly (GA) meeting was attended by all JoPACC shareholders who also participated in the elections. GA members include the Central Bank, represented by its Governor and one of his deputies, in addition to all the 23 operating banks in the Kingdom represented by their CEOs. The Board of Directors consists of 11 members, two of whom represent the Central Bank of Jordan and 9 bank representatives.

The new Board of Directors includes the following members:

• H.E Dr. Adel Al Sharkas, Governor of the Central Bank and Chairman of the Board
• His Excellency Dr. Khaldoun AlWishah – Central Bank of Jordan
• Ms. Randa Sadek – Arab Bank
• Mr. Ammar Al-Safadi – The Housing Bank for Trade and Finance
• Mr. Dawod Al-Ghoul – Capital Bank
• Mr. Haethum Al Buttikhi – Jordan Kuwait Bank
• Mr. Kamal Al Bakri – Cairo Amman Bank
• Dr. Hussein Saeed – Jordan Islamic Bank
• Mr. Muhammad Musa  Daoud – Jordan Ahli Bank
• Mr. Muntaser Dawwas – Invest Bank
• Mr. Caesar Qulajen – Jordan Commercial Bank

The elected board will play a vital role in developing the company’s new strategy and supervising its implementation, in addition to providing strategic direction for the company’s operations to ensure the fulfillment of its high-level goals that are primarily centered around strengthening the digital payment infrastructure and expanding digital financial inclusion in Jordan.

During the meeting, Ms. Maha Bahou, CEO of JoPACC, presented the implementation progress of the company’s strategy in its third year, highlighting the launch of the CliQ system, which enables instant transfers between bank accounts in Jordan, and the upgrade of the JoMoPay system for mobile wallets to the latest ISO20022 standard, which enabled full interoperability between financial accounts linked to both systems efficiently, instantly, and seamlessly. Dr. Adel Sharkas, Chairman of the Board of Directors, expressed his appreciation and gratitude to the previous board, which led the company with the utmost dedication during the past three years.

JoPACC was established in 2017 and is owned by the Central Bank of Jordan and all operating banks in the Kingdom. The company works to achieve its primary goal, which is providing comprehensive and innovative financial services and digital payments that benefit everyone and contribute to the digital financial inclusion in the Kingdom towards achieving a digital economy.

The First Neo Financial Institution in KSA; Loan Financing Company (LFC), a newly-established microfinance company in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, has selected ICS BANKS Digital Platform, a worldwide digital Shari’a compliant software solution, from ICS Financial Systems (ICSFS), the global software and services provider for banks and financial institutions.

The LFC has received a no-objection letter from the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA), which regulates and oversees the operations of banks and financial institutions across the country.

The LFC also received preliminary approval from SAMA to incorporate a consumer microfinance company, delivering financing solutions compliant with the Islamic Shari’a. The company will provide innovatively, end-to-end Shari’a-compliant lending products and services catering to customer need through a mobile application hosted in the cloud and available exclusively online.

The signing ceremony took place end of May of this year at the ICSFS Center of Excellence in Jordan and was headed by LFC’s Board Members and ICSFS’ Managing Directors.

ICSFS invests in its software suites by utilizing modern technology in launching new products, constructing a secured and agile integration, and keeping pace with new standards and regulations worldwide. ICS BANK’s software suite future-proof banking and financing activities by providing a broad range of features and capabilities with more agility and flexibility, to enrich customers’ journey experience, hence improving the trust and confidentiality with the customer. ICS BANKS has always been a pioneer in utilising the latest technology to serve financial institutions. In addition to its embedded Service-Oriented-Architecture (SOA), Digital Platform.

From mid-2020 until today, CliQ– JoPACC’s instant payment system – has made a significant impact on its users’ lives, allowing instant transfers between bank accounts in Jordan, both individual and legal accounts, and between bank accounts and mobile wallets simultaneously. With more than (300,000) users, JoPACC celebrates the 2nd anniversary of launching CliQ.

JoPACC is constantly developing CliQ by adopting the latest developments in the FinTech industry, driven by the needs of financial users. CliQ has introduced advanced features during the past two years, besides enabling instant digital transfers between financial accounts. These features include “Request-to-Pay”, which allows CliQ users to send a payment request of a specific amount directly to the receiver and gives them the option to accept the request and make the transfer accordingly or reject it. They further include the “Return Payment” feature, which enables recipients to return transfers fully or partially. Moreover, CliQ recently facilitated “QR Code Payments on POS Devices,” allowing CliQ users to pay merchants instantly by scanning a QR code that is generated on the merchant’s point of sale (POS) device from their mobile bank application. Many merchants in the Kingdom have started offering this payment service to their customers in shops, cafes, and other places. Through CliQ, the process of sending and receiving money instantly, anywhere, and anytime through mobile devices has become possible. This has contributed to expanding the uptake of digital payment services, which in turn led to an increase in digital liquidity in the Kingdom.

Since its launch, and in addition to the aforementioned features, CliQ has introduced the use of an alias instead of a bank account number or IBAN for making transfers, thereby accelerating the transfer process. Aliases are unique nicknames linked to their owner’s national number, making it impossible for another user to register the same alias. Users can register more than one alias for the same bank account and use the same alias for several financial accounts, whether bank accounts or mobile wallets. Other competitive features include the payee confirmation, where the recipient’s name is presented to the sender before making transfers, thus reducing the possibility of sending wrong transfers. Credit confirmation is another feature, which entails sending a notification to the sender once the payment is deposited into the recipient’s account. CliQ services are also available around the clock.

CliQ is owned and operated by JoPACC. Currently, 19 banks in the Kingdom have connected to CliQ, and all offer the service free of charge to their clients and provide support to ensure the seamless use of the service. JoPACC has recently upgraded JoMoPay, the Mobile Payment Switch in Jordan, to operate according to the same ISO standard that is adopted by the CliQ system (ISO 20022), which enabled instant money transfers between the two systems. This step has contributed to achieving more interoperability between financial institutions in the Kingdom and is well aligned with the Central Bank’s and JoPACC’s vision to achieve digital financial inclusion in Jordan.