Starting a forex brokerage in Jordan

Only a company the JSC has already licensed as a financial services company may apply, and the work must be done through individuals the JSC has approved.

Capital is set per activity and adds up. A firm taking two licences holds the sum of both minimums, plus the minimum for any licence it holds in the local market, and its net equity must be at least 75% of paid up capital when it applies and at all times afterwards. The Board decides within sixty days of a complete file. The firm then has six months to meet the start conditions in Article 7, among them paying the fees, lodging an unconditional bank surety in the JSC's favour, naming at least two approved individuals for most activities, filing a business continuity plan with a backup data server and handing in its legal adviser's statement that its agreements comply.

The file itself asks for an organisation chart with a unit dedicated to foreign exchanges, written procedures for each service, a compliance manual, risk procedures and written anti-money laundering procedures covering client acceptance, due diligence and the real beneficiary of each account. Investment custody is open only to financial services companies owned by or affiliated with a bank, and investment management abroad needs five years of the same work in the local market. The JSC has added to these rules by circular before, so check the current position with it and with a Jordanian lawyer. This is not legal advice.

Article 13 requires its agreement with the foreign broker to say that leverage for clients trading currencies and precious metals is granted through that broker, and that every client order in those markets is covered in full there. Article 10 bars the licensee from financing clients with its own money or theirs, from margin financing and from dealing in digital currencies for itself or its clients. Where it trades through an omnibus account, Article 17 lets client orders reach its internal records only after they have actually been executed abroad.

Article 10 sets account rules as well: no accounts for minors, no joint accounts with more than one beneficiary, no more than five sub-accounts for a client trading currencies, metals or commodities, and no cash paid to clients. Money goes out by cheque, transfer or another electronic method, and only to the first beneficiary. Every client signs a written agreement with the JSC's mandatory guidance leaflet attached, hears about trades on the account the same day and receives a detailed statement at least every three months.

Two circulars tighten this. After the Board's session of 2 June 2022 the JSC told licensees that leverage from their foreign broker for currency and precious metals clients may not exceed 100 times the cash deposited, that a client asking for more than 30 times signs the JSC's acknowledgment form, and that bid and ask prices from the foreign broker are used without any change and kept on an electronic record. Board decision 39/2024 of 6 February 2024 added that agreements, notices and the website are in Arabic, that the margin call level and every commission are written into the agreement and changed only with the client's prior written consent, that prices are real and in real time with no intervention, that pricing errors are reported and corrected at once, and that an outage affecting client trading is reported to the JSC by the second business day.

The Jordanian licences are built differently. A financial broker for others passes currency and metals orders to its foreign broker in full, takes leverage and prices from that broker and may not alter them, while a dealer licence covers the firm's own trading rather than clients. A JSC licensee should therefore talk to us and to the JSC about how its client orders would flow before it commits to a platform.

In the Jordanian chain the dealing role belongs to the foreign broker, and since the JSC's decision announced on 30 June 2024 that broker faces firm tests. Its home regulator must be a full member of IOSCO and a signatory to its memorandum of understanding, and must not sit in a country on the FATF's high risk list or its list of jurisdictions under increased monitoring, under UN Security Council sanctions, counted as a tax haven by the Financial Secrecy Index or among the most corrupt on Transparency International's index. The broker must have been operating for at least five years before the contract, and for CFDs two Jordanian licensees may not sign with the same foreign broker, or one from its group, while their agreements run. Licensees had until 30 June 2025 to comply.

For a founder who wants to run the book, that points to a brokerage licensed abroad by a regulator that passes those tests, which could later contract with a JSC licensee once it has the operating history. The JSC publishes which foreign brokers each licensee works with and who licenses them, so the pattern is visible. Whether it suits your plans is a question for Jordanian counsel.

Its warning on unlicensed companies sends the public to its published list, and an earlier warning asks investors to read the contract terms and the JSC's guidance leaflet before signing, and calls on licensed firms to make clear that profit is never certain. A 2024 warning tells citizens to check the identity of anyone who contacts them to promote a financial services company by calling the company on the numbers its own website gives, and to use payment methods approved by Jordan's regulators for any money they send to trade abroad.

The 2025 warning to clients adds that the company should be licensed by the JSC and present in Jordan, that the account opening documents and agreements should all come from that company, and that the JSC supervises only the firms it has licensed. The JSC has also restated its ban on using digital currencies for payment or investment through its licensed firms.

For a licensed firm the warnings shape daily practice. Article 16 of the instructions requires it to display its JSC licence at its premises and branches, on its website and on its social media pages, and Article 24 requires clear risk warnings in every advertisement. A client who finds a firm among the 21 on the JSC's list has a concrete reason to trust it.

On Android it goes to the home screen in one tap, on iOS after a short guided step, and no app store sits in between. The market list covers forex, gold and silver, oil, stock indices, crypto and US stocks, with a spread, contract size and digits defined for each instrument. Because a JSC licensee may not deal in digital currencies, any offer that reaches Jordanian clients through a licensee should be planned without crypto.

The Jordanian ceilings land on the account settings. Leverage is set per account type and per account, so accounts arriving through a Jordanian licensee can sit at 100 times or less, and above 30 times only once the signed acknowledgment is on file. The margin engine tracks live equity and free margin, warns at margin call and stops out automatically at the levels you choose, closing the biggest loser first, which lets you match the margin call level written into the client agreement. Should an account still end below zero, an admin writes it back to zero in the CRM and the write-off is kept on record.

Leads land in a pipeline tagged with their source and are assigned to agents, and each client has a single record with their accounts, money, trades, documents and calls. Five roles run from admin down to sales, and an agent sees only their own book. With every account on one record, checking that no client holds more than the five sub-accounts the instructions allow takes a glance.

Deposits and withdrawals run instantly or after approval, as you decide, against the bank and payment details you set, which fits a rule that pays clients only by cheque, transfer or electronic payment and only to the first beneficiary. Identity documents are reviewed in the CRM before any withdrawal leaves, in step with the written due diligence procedures the JSC asks for at application, and sensitive staff actions are written to an audit trail. The price of the platform is a flat monthly fee with no setup fee, and the first month is free.