VARA issued Payward FZCO a Virtual Asset Service Provider licence on October 6 covering broker-dealer services and management and investment services. The regulator’s public register lists the licence as active and permits the entity to serve retail, qualified and institutional investors.
Payward said Kraken expects to begin serving UAE clients within the coming weeks. At launch, customers will be able to trade AED-denominated spot and margin pairs and deposit or withdraw funds directly in dirhams, reducing reliance on dollar or stablecoin conversion before entering crypto markets.
What Does Kraken’s Dubai Licence Allow?
The approval completes a process that began with preliminary authorization in May. Payward’s earlier VARA approval allowed the company to prepare its local operating infrastructure but did not permit full client onboarding.
The new licence moves Payward into the operational stage. Kraken said UAE customers will also receive access to onchain staking, its xStocks tokenized-equities product and the Krak crypto-transfer service. Institutional customers are expected to receive OTC spot execution and Kraken Prime.
Crypto derivatives and additional yield products are planned for later in 2026 and into 2027, but Payward explicitly said those offerings remain subject to further regulatory approval.
The distinction matters because the licence should not be read as blanket permission for every Kraken product. VARA authorizes firms for defined activities and product categories, and future derivatives or yield services could require separate clearance.
Investor Takeaway
AED funding and trading remove a conversion layer for UAE clients, giving Kraken a stronger local proposition than simply offering another offshore crypto account.
Why Are AED Trading Pairs Strategically Important?
Direct dirham markets can affect both customer acquisition and trading costs. Without local-currency pairs, investors may first need to convert AED into dollars, stablecoins or another supported currency before purchasing crypto, adding an extra transaction and potentially another spread.
Kraken plans to connect UAE customers to the same broader liquidity infrastructure used elsewhere on its platform rather than building an isolated regional order book. Payward says its shared architecture combines liquidity, margin, collateral and settlement infrastructure across its businesses.
That can be particularly relevant for professional and institutional investors, where execution quality and available liquidity may matter more than the number of assets listed.
The launch also follows changes Kraken has already made for UAE users to fit local rules. In September, Kraken completed the removal of several assets for UAE residents, including privacy-focused cryptocurrencies and stablecoins affected by the country’s developing regulatory framework.
How Competitive Is the UAE Crypto Market Becoming?
Kraken is entering a market where crypto trading is increasingly being offered through several regulatory channels rather than only dedicated digital-asset exchanges.
In September, Standard Chartered began offering spot Bitcoin and Ether trading to institutional clients in the UAE through its Dubai International Financial Centre branch, which is supervised by the Dubai Financial Services Authority.
Other brokers and digital-asset firms are also securing permissions under VARA and the UAE’s federal regulatory structure. That creates competition not only over fees and token listings but also over local banking access, AED settlement, custody, institutional liquidity and regulatory credibility.
VARA operates across Dubai’s mainland and free zones outside the DIFC, while the DIFC is regulated separately by the DFSA. That gives international firms several possible routes into the UAE market depending on their products and target customers.
Investor Takeaway
The UAE race is moving from securing licences to execution: local funding, liquidity and product breadth will increasingly determine which regulated platforms win market share.
What Comes Next for Kraken in the UAE?
The immediate milestone is the actual client launch. Payward has committed only to a rollout “in the coming weeks” and has not provided a fixed date.
Beyond spot and margin trading, the more consequential expansion could come from derivatives and additional yield products if regulators approve them. Those products typically generate higher trading activity and deeper customer engagement than basic spot markets, but they also bring stricter leverage, suitability and risk-management requirements.
Payward also intends to offer its infrastructure to regional companies through embedded trading services, potentially allowing partners to build crypto products on top of Kraken’s liquidity and technology rather than creating their own exchange infrastructure.
The licence therefore gives Payward two possible growth channels in the UAE: acquiring Kraken customers directly and supplying trading infrastructure to other financial businesses. The first test will be whether AED-native access can convert Dubai’s regulatory approval into meaningful local trading activity once the platform goes live.
