Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and the Central Bank of Jordan (CBJ) are jointly implementing the Improving "Access to Remittances and other Financial Services through Digital Solutions" Project: Digi#ances, which is part of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (BMZ) special initiative "Tackling the Root Causes of Displacement, Reintegrating Refugees".
Digi#ances aims to increase the use of digital financial services, including cross-border remittances, by unbanked Jordanians and refugees - women in particular - mostly in the 3 northern governorates. To accomplish this, the project employs several approaches:
• Piloting of needs-based mobile money services, including remittances, in collaboration with stakeholders from the private and nongovernmental sectors.
• Enhancing the regulatory and supervisory framework for digital financial services in cooperation with the Central Bank of Jordan (CBJ), including cross-border remittances via e-wallet.
• Conducting campaigns and training courses tailored to the target groups promoting the responsible use of digital financial services.
Apart from that the project signed a co-financing agreement with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) intending to improve financial inclusion and resilience of migrant workers in Jordan by piloting an outbound cross-border remittances corridor. The intention is to transfer the existing methodological approach of Digi#ances to a new target group, mainly Bangladeshi workers in the garment sector, in Jordan.
Digi#ances contributed to fine-tuning the regulatory framework for mobile payment services in Jordan, including digital cross-border remittances, by conducting studies and providing technical assistance in areas of oversight and supervision, consumer protection and AML/CFT.
Digi#ances also launched the Digital Financial Services (DFS) Council as a consultative body for DFS related reforms, in 2016. Overall, 15 high level DFS Council meetings have been conducted. Since 2017, 15 DFS "Dialogues" and knowledge exchanges have been organised to cover emerging topics.
Furthermore, through a Development Partnership with the Payment Service Provider (PSP) Dinarak, the project supported the development of a greater agent network and thereby facilitated the uptake and usage of digital financial services by unbanked refugees and Jordanians. In this context, Digi#ances additionally provided agent management trainings for various PSPs and piloted a women agent initiative. Despite the progress that has been made, the agent network remains a challenge in the mobile payment ecosystem.
In 2020, two pilots for cross-border remittances have been successfully implemented in cooperation with AyaPay (inbound) and Dinarak (outbound).
Currently, there are seven Payment Service Providers active in the market, more than two thousand agents and more than three thousand merchants, that accept mobile payments, all over Jordan. The number of mobile wallets reached 1.4 million and is continuously increasing – about 36% percent of the users are women.
The Project provides Digital Financial Literacy trainings (DFS) to familiarise unbanked refugees and Jordanians with the use of digital financial services. As of December 2022, 26.654 people received trainings in (DFS), of whom 12.143 Jordanian, 14.511 refugees and 2549 migrant workers (67% women), while the awareness campaigns reached 489.458 people of whom 404.154 Jordanian and 85304 refugees (50% women). In addition, 116 deaf participants were trained (63 women, 53 men).
The project also provides training of trainers to ensure sus-tainable effectiveness of the project, as a result 788 people were trained as trainers.
In Jordan, mobile wallets are registered on the Jordan Mobile Payments (JoMoPay) electronic platform. The platform itself is managed by Jordan Payment and Clearance Company (JoPACC). According to data published by JoPACC, the num-ber of registered mobile wallets is 2.05 million. Of which 250,000 are refugees, 1.78 million are Jordanian and 730 migrants’
In 2021, cooperation agreements were signed with UNHCR and with WFP. The agreements aime to support the digitiza-tion of humanitarian assistance using mobile wallets and in-crease the use of mobile wallet by refugees. One of the re-sults of this cooperation currently 98% of the households re-siding in the Azraq refugee camp (7,419) and 97.5% of the households living in Za'atari (16,028) receive their aid pay-ments via the mobile wallet.
Currently, 724,365 Jordanians use their mobile wallets at least once a quarter (active users). Jordanian women have 264,983, representing 36% of total active users.