The Securities Depository Center (SDC) of Jordan is a public utility institution established in the Kingdom by virtue of the Securities Law No (23) of 1997. The Securities Law of 1997 separated the functions of the Amman Financial Market (AFM) and created the Jordan Securities Commission (JSC), the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) and the Securities Depository Center (SDC). The SDC subjects to the JSC's monitoring and supervision.

The SDC, which has a legal personality with financial and administrative autonomy, commenced operation in May 1999 and is the only entity in Jordan that is legally empowered by the virtue of Securities Law No. (18) of 2017 to oversee the following responsibilities

● Registration of securities
● Deposit of securities
● Transfer of ownership and safekeeping of securities
● Clearance and settlement of securities transaction

In order for the SDC to perform its operations, it was necessary to establish a central registry and depository of authenticated shareholders along with a central settlement process. This ensures that the shareholders' registers of all public shareholding companies are held and maintained at the SDC in electronic form.

The SDC is one of the major institutions in the Jordan Capital Market as it holds the ownership registers of all issued shares. It has been assigned, in cooperation with the JSC and the ASE, the task of developing the Jordan Capital Market.

In addition to the SDC's responsibilities that are assigned by virtue of the Securities Law, the SDC performs the following tasks in order to fulfill its goals:

● Supervision and monitoring the SDC's members' activities related to the SDC.
● Express opinion on legislations and its amendments that related to the SDC's works and propose legislations and procedures to guarantee protection the investors, the owner of the securities.
● Issuing reports and publish information and statistics about the SDC's activities
● Establish cooperative relations with other securities depository centers and Arab, regional and international organizations in the securities field and conclude agreements to serve the objectives of the SDC.
● Establish and manage Settlement Guarantee Fund.

The SDC has been recognized by the Association of National Numbering Agencies (ANNA) and the JSC as the sole numbering agency in Jordan for the assignment of International Security Identification Numbers (ISIN). All share books at the SDC are numbered according to the ISIN numbering scheme.