The UAE has moved from free-zone sandboxes to national payment rails, open finance and licensed dirham stablecoins in the past decade.
The UAE’s fintech sector has its roots in the financial free zones, where Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) launched RegLab in November 2016 – the region’s first fintech regulatory sandbox.
The first cohort included two start-ups from the UAE, two from India and one from the US.
The Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) opened its FinTech Hive accelerator in January 2017, and the Dubai Financial Services Authority introduced an innovation testing licence allowing companies to test products under limited authorisation.
The Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE) continued these efforts on the mainland on 12 February 2023 with its Financial Infrastructure Transformation (FIT) programme, a plan to modernise the domestic payments infrastructure and broaden the scope of activities it supervises.
A domestic card network, a real-time payments platform, an open finance platform and a central bank digital currency are all among the nine initiatives.
UAE: Development of national payment networks
Aani, the programme’s first national payment network, went live in October 2023. Al Etihad Payments (AEP), a subsidiary of the CBUAE, operates the platform, which allows users to transfer money using a mobile number, an Emirates ID or a QR code instead of an IBAN.
In April 2026, AEP reported that Aani had more than 12.5 million registered users, spread across 74 authorised financial institutions, with approximately 774,000 affiliated merchants and a six-fold increase in the number of transfers compared with the previous year.
Jaywan, the domestic card network managed by AEP, applies the same approach to cards by routing, authorising and processing domestic transactions locally rather than via international networks.
Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the CBUAE, officially launched the scheme on 20 July 2026, when First Abu Dhabi Bank launched a Jaywan payment card and the Commercial Bank of Dubai introduced prepaid cards.
Eleven institutions had indicated that they were ready to issue cards by 23 July, whilst the remainder would join in phases.
On 21 July, AEP and Mastercard announced the first Jaywan–Mastercard co-badged credit card. In August, AEP signed a memorandum with UnionPay International to route mono-badged Jaywan cards used abroad via the UnionPay network, in addition to the Jaywan–UnionPay co-badged cards that institutions in the UAE are already able to issue.
On 3 August 2026, the Ministry of Finance became the first federal authority to adopt both payment channels, when it added Aani and Jaywan as payment channels for federal fees and fines.
Open finance and the new regulatory framework
The CBUAE’s Open Finance Regulation, issued in December 2023 and updated in July 2025, extends the programme from payment channels to customer data. It covers the banking and insurance sectors, and participation is mandatory for authorised banks, insurers, finance companies and payment providers.
Third parties require an Open Finance licence from the CBUAE to offer data exchange, payment initiation or both.
Each bank and third-party provider connects via a single central API hub, which is managed by Nebras Open Finance, an entity of the CBUAE, under the brand name AlTareq. The hub also establishes a single authorisation and authentication process for all participants. Banks in the United Kingdom and the EU each manage their own interfaces.
The framework processed its first live transactions in January 2026. The Commercial Bank of Dubai announced that month that it was the first bank to have fully activated open finance, while the payment app Ziina and infrastructure provider Lean Technologies completed the first live, customer-initiated payment.
In April, the Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank became the first bank to be licensed as a third party provider. In May, Lean expanded its ‘Pay by Bank’ product to the national payments system and reported that its account-to-account payments, which have been available in the country since 2022, had saved businesses over $100m in card fees.
The powers of the CBUAE in relation to these activities were expanded when Federal Decree-Law No. 6 of 2025, the new Central Bank Law, came into force on 16 September 2025.
The Act replaced the Central Bank Act of 2018 and the Insurance Act of 2023, and extended the CBUAE’s remit to include open finance, payment services using virtual assets, and technology providers facilitating financial services.
Companies had until mid-September 2026 to comply with the law. The law also allows the CBUAE to publish the names of companies and individuals against whom it takes enforcement action.
Stablecoins are subject to a separate set of regulations issued by the CBUAE, the ‘Payment Token Services Regulation’, which was enacted in June 2024 and restricts domestic payments for goods and services to licensed, dirham-backed tokens.
AE Coin became the first dirham-backed stablecoin to be approved under this regulation in December 2024. Zand AED received approval in November 2025, and DDSC, backed by International Holding Company, First Abu Dhabi Bank and Sirius International Holding, followed in February 2026. RAKBANK received approval in principle in January 2026. Foreign stablecoins may be registered with the CBUAE but may only be used to purchase virtual assets.
UAE: What comes next?
The same Central Bank Law grants legal tender status to the Digital Dirham, the CBUAE’s own digital currency and the largest component of the FIT programme that is not yet available to the public.
The Ministry of Finance and Dubai Finance used it in November 2025 for the nation’s first government transaction in this currency, and Sheikh Mansour made the first cross-border payment to China using it in the same month. The CBUAE had planned to issue the Digital Dirham to retail customers in the final quarter of 2025 but has not since announced a launch date for retail customers.
The CBUAE has not published a timetable for the second phase of open finance, which would involve the remaining licence holders, including currency exchange bureaux and payment providers.
AEP has cited cross-border payments, electronic direct debits, e-cheques and business-to-business payments as planned Aani services. Cross-border transfers would, for example, give the platform access to the remittance market serving foreign workers in the UAE.
On 23 February 2026, the CBUAE published guidelines on consumer protection and the responsible use of AI and machine learning by the companies to which it grants licences.
