On June 18, 2026, Jet Bank launched as the first fully digital bank in the Western Balkans. It came with a smooth mobile experience, instant digital onboarding, and a banking journey designed for the smartphone era.
But behind this seamless launch was an immense challenge: creating an entire bank from the ground up in just seven months.
According to Gjergji Guri, CEO of Facilization, the founding technology partner for the project, the greatest challenge was not the technology.
“People often assume that building a digital bank is primarily about choosing the right technology vendors. In reality, technology is only one part of the equation. The real challenge is integrating multiple enterprise-grade platforms, coordinating several strategic vendors, onboarding an entirely new organization while it is being built, and connecting all the infrastructure required to operate a regulated bank. Delivering all of that within seven months required an exceptional level of collaboration, agility, and ownership, by all parties involved.” — Gjergji Guri, CEO of Facilization
Before Jet Bank even had an executive team, operational structure or technology set-up, its shareholders faced a major question: who could bring together the technology, expertise, and execution needed to turn their vision into a reality?
Their answer was Facilization.
Choosing the right technology partner
Facilization joined the project during its earliest formation stages, supporting shareholders in establishing the technology foundations required for launch.
Over seven months, Facilization’s team of more than 25 consultants worked intensively on the project. They engineered a world-class banking ecosystem, combining global banking platforms with their proprietary solutions and deep local banking expertise to create a single operating digital bank.
Following the successful completion of the Bank of Albania licensing process, Jet Bank moved forward with transforming its approval into a functioning digital banking platform.
Facilization led and delivered Oracle’s core banking and payments capabilities, delivered customer engagement, workflow automation and digital lending journeys on Creatio, and supported integration between Backbase’s AI-Native Banking Operating System with Oracle Banking and the broader banking ecosystem. Along with these global technologies, Facilization deployed its own proprietary products, including F-Analytics for regulatory and managerial reporting and F-Connect for payment connectivity and integration services.
The result is a unified, scalable, and AI-ready banking platform that enables rapid launch of new digital products, quick adaptation to regulatory changes, and continuous standard elevation in customer experience.
Technology is only one part of the equation
During the phase of the building, Jet Bank expanded its internal team to over 70 employees, with Facilization working closely with these teams to transfer knowledge, align operating processes and maintain delivery momentum.
The result is a bank that now sets a new regional benchmark for time to market in digital banking.
Jet Bank combines a cloud-native, AI-ready architecture with fully digital customer onboarding, mobile-first banking services, and instant EUR payments capabilities. With more than 75,000 prospective customers in its pipeline, the bank is back up by a strong technology foundation for rapid growth and innovation.
"Jet Bank demonstrates that a fully digital banking model can be successfully built and operate in Albania using world-class technology, strong partnerships and a customer-centric approach. Our ambition is not only to deliver a better banking experience, but to help redefine expectations for banking across the region”.
— Fatbardha Rino, CEO of Jet Bank
A blueprint for digital banking transformation in the Balkans
For Facilization, Jet Bank is more than a successful launch, it is a repeatable delivery model for building digital banks quickly and effectively.
As regulators modernize frameworks and customer demands evolve, financial institutions increasingly require partners capable of managing the complexity of multi-vendor banking ecosystems while maintaining accountability for outcomes.
Jet Bank shows that world-class digital banking can be developed in the region by using the same technologies used by leading global institutions. It establishes a proven, repeatable model for creating digital banks and accelerating the modernization of banking, enabling financial institutions throughout the Western Balkans and beyond to innovate more quickly and confidently.
For the broader banking sector, Jet Bank marks a significant milestone as the region’s first fully digital bank.
For Facilization, it marks the successful execution of something even more ambitious: helping build a bank from the ground up and creating a blueprint for the next generation of digital banking across the region.
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