Jordan Ahli Bank launches FinTech accelerator, to offer up to $200,000 funding to selected startups

Jordan Ahli Bank has launched a FinTech accelerator, bank’s Chief Innovation Officer Rami Al Karmi announced at RiseUp Summit in Cairo today. The accelerator is part of Ahli Fintech, a subsidiary of Jordan Ahli Bank that was launched in August last year.

The seed accelerator program is open to startups from all across the world and will run for six months in Jordan. It is divided into two parts, with the first three months focused on helping startups validate their business and the next three months to help them scale, Rami said, announcing the accelerator.

The selected startups could receive up to $200,000 as investment from Ahli Fintech. But there’s no minimum so some startups could choose to just join the program if they’re selected without receiving any investment, Rami Al Karmi, Jordan Ahli Bank’s Chief Innovation Officer and CEO of Ahli Fintech, said, speaking to MENAbytes, adding, that they have already received some interest from those who want to join the program because they are interested only in instant market access.

Any company that joins the program, regardless of receiving investment or not, will have to pay a program fee of $30,000.

The program apart from capital also offers access to over 130 APIs on Ahli Sandbox environment; a self-contained, virtual testing environment that mimics the live production environment, enabling startups create customer-facing application with ease, advice, and mentorship from a network of over 1,000 mentors including Ahli Bank’s team, partners and vendors, free workspace for six months, and an option to pilot with Ahli Bank’s customers.

Once the startups graduate from accelerator and pass the Central Bank of Jordan’s compliance review and Ahli Sandbox verification, they are migrated to live environment and can run their applications live with the customers.

The applications for the program are open to any FinTech startup across the world. You can learn more about the program here and apply here. Deadline to apply is December 31, 2018.