2020 Year in Review

Dear Colleagues and Partners,

I would like to first and foremost extend my sincere compassion to all those who have been affected by the unprecedented global events of 2020. The losses the world has incurred this year are tragic, but with tragedy comes new hope – we must, on personal and professional levels, persevere to secure a healthier and better future for generations to come.

As this year comes to a close, we find ourselves preparing for the year ahead while reflecting on what had passed. With workspaces relatively deserted in institutions big and small, the decline in the global economic outlook is evident, and imminent for years to come.

It is with no doubt that this year had an unavoidable impact on our daily activities, and we have been fortunate to have had this impact non-existent on our business. In the past few years, we migrated all our infrastructure services to highly available Cloud Kubernetes, we continuously improved the development cycles for all teams by implementing combined practices of continuous integration and continuous delivery, and created a dedicated cluster to host demonstration sites for our solutions. Our teams have ever been armed with agile development methodologies and always available online resources to continue to work at full speed, in fully remote environments. A digitally driven transformation that was already in train at financial institutions was accelerated, and so did the demand for our contactless, interoperable and secure payment solutions.

However, throughout waves of tremendous financial and economic change in the past 30 years, this year, we had to deliver an ever-existing promise to our partners: business continuity in times of crisis. We had to respond in ways that fortified our partners’ success, and our position as the reliable payment solutions provider. And so, the disruption to our business did not come in the form of adapting to partial and fully remote environments, but rather in the form of new and prompt innovations that create adaptive and growth opportunities for financial institutions.

With hard and smart work, I am delighted to announce that our resilient infrastructure and diligent teams have successfully implemented, launched and upgraded over 10 of our payment solutions in over 40 financial institutions around the world. Many of these implementations were launched promptly and in record-time, and all of them were completed with thanks to the determination of hard-working teams in our 7 offices across the globe.

While borders have never confined our potential or ambitions, this year’s events have withheld us from the pleasure of physically meeting with our existing and potential partners. However, we continued to take part in the world’s most prominent financial events including Sibos and the Central Bank Payments Conference, and had the honor of virtually connecting with industry experts and announce our recommendations through several insightful sessions, and the feedback we received was wonderful.

Our corporate social responsibility continues to be a top priority. In 2020, we joined the Jordanian government in the fight against the global pandemic through granting over 1,000 smart devices for electronic permits, QR code features to enable contactless payments, and a gesture of gratitude to the police and armed forces. We launched the first code-based peacebuilding program, distributed annual packages to the less fortunate, and recycled our paper waste for a greener future. Our commitment to elevating education remains with numerous virtual sessions conducted by our teams and continuous maintenance to The ProgressSoft Lab today motivating students and educators alike at the University of Jordan. And while our three-year donation plan to the King Hussein Cancer Center expansion project was concluded in 2019, we found new ways to raise breast cancer awareness virtually and renewed our membership in the Cancer Care Program.

Before we turn a new page, I must extend my sincere gratitude to our stakeholders whose trust has made us pull through unprecedented times with grace, and in turn, enabled us to continue to deliver our promise of business continuity and growth for the financial industry.

Finally, I wish you all a healthier, more hopeful year ahead. Stay safe.

Yours Sincerely,

Michael Wakileh