Airwallex has announced a five-year, $43 million commitment to the UAE and confirmed it already holds Central Bank of the UAE in-principle approval for two licences — Stored Value Facilities and Retail Payment Services (Category II). The goal is full approval and a launch of regulated services in the country in 2026. Here is what those licences are, what they mean for business, and how the story fits into the CBUAE push for regulated fintech.
What Airwallex actually announced
According to Fintech News UAE (28 August 2026) and an Airwallex statement distributed via PRLog, the global payments platform is investing $43 million in the UAE over five years. The funding goes into an expanded Dubai office, senior hires (including local and UAE-based international talent), new financial products for the regional market and regional infrastructure. Dubai is positioned as the hub of Airwallex’s Middle East, Europe, UK and Africa growth — not a satellite of another headquarters.
The regulatory piece matters most for business. Airwallex confirmed that it already holds CBUAE in-principle approval for two licences: Stored Value Facilities (SVF) and Retail Payment Services (RPS) Category II. The company is now working toward full approval to launch UAE services under those licences during 2026.
As Or Liban, Managing Director for the Middle East, Benelux and Nordics at Airwallex, put it, the investment addresses a concrete gap: “Businesses in the UAE are scaling into more markets and handling more currencies than ever, but too many are still held back by financial infrastructure built for a single one.” The rest of his statement stresses growing the Dubai team and building products for “the region’s most ambitious companies, many of which are trading internationally from day one.” The company also flagged that its new CFO, Pranav Sood, will speak at Abu Dhabi Finance Week in December 2026 on regional investment and the modern finance function.
What SVF and RPS Category II licences actually are
Both licences are part of the CBUAE framework that formalises a dedicated regime for non-bank payment providers.
Stored Value Facilities (SVF) is the regime for stored electronic value: the provider is authorised to hold customer funds as an e-wallet, a prepaid account or another balance-linked instrument. The 2020 regulation sets capital, safeguarding, reporting and compliance requirements. The SVF piece is what lets a payments platform legally hold customer money on UAE soil.
Retail Payment Services (RPS) is the regime for the retail-payments perimeter: acquiring, money transfers, remittance, online payment acceptance, payment aggregators and payment initiation services. The 2021 regulation splits the licence into categories by turnover and service profile; Category II is the tier for companies with larger turnover and a broader operational scope than the base Category I. To run regulated payment operations in the UAE without a banking licence, a non-bank provider needs either both SVF and RPS, or one of them, depending on the product model.
For context, other fintechs are on the same track this year. Spend-management platform Alaan recently received CBUAE in-principle approval for SVF and RPS — a natural complement to the wider corporate banking landscape in the UAE. Chinese cross-border platform XTransfer has moved the same way on Retail Payment Services. The Central Bank is steadily building out the roster of regulated non-bank providers on the ground.
What in-principle approval actually delivers — and what it doesn’t
“In-principle approval” is sometimes read as “green light, off you go.” It is not. In-principle approval is the regulator’s confirmation that the basics — structure, capital, governance, compliance — meet the regime. But before services can go live under the licence, there is a second step: full approval. In this phase, the provider:
- finalises and tests operational processes (including safeguarding and segregation of customer funds);
- completes the final audit and files live documentation with the regulator;
- signs off product lines and commercial terms;
- delivers the final compliance procedures (KYC, AML, sanctions, reporting).
Only after full approval can the provider officially launch a regulated service in the UAE. Airwallex has named its target explicitly — 2026. For any business planning to work with the service, that is the reference date: today Airwallex is scaling in the country, but regulated services under its own CBUAE licences kick in once the company gets full approval.
Who in the UAE stands to benefit
Airwallex’s core audience is companies that work with several currencies and several countries from day one. In practice the list includes:
- online stores and D2C brands selling to customers outside the UAE (Europe, UK, Asia);
- SaaS and digital services with international subscriptions;
- marketplaces and platform models with foreign sellers and buyers;
- export and import companies paying suppliers in EUR, GBP, CNY, USD and receiving revenue back in different currencies;
- consulting and professional services with overseas contracts and mixed-currency revenue.
These businesses typically lose value on legacy-bank FX spreads and cross-border fees, and often wait weeks or months for a multi-currency corporate account. A regulated local provider closes part of that gap — multi-currency accounts, card acceptance from multiple jurisdictions, cross-border payouts, FX close to interbank rates and corporate cards, all in one interface with a transparent tariff and local support. Additional context on the country’s national payments infrastructure sits in a separate deep-dive on Jaywan, the UAE’s national payment card for business.
Important: Airwallex is not a substitute for a corporate bank account. A traditional bank is still needed for resident payroll, local transactions via WPS, cheques, and large-scale corporate treasury operations. Regulated payment providers are a specialised layer on top of banking — which is exactly how CBUAE frames them.
How this fits the CBUAE agenda
For the UAE market, the Airwallex story is not an isolated one. Over the last eighteen months, the Central Bank has issued in-principle approvals to a growing list of specialised non-bank providers while tightening requirements on capital, reporting and safeguarding. The logic — open the market to specialised firms, but through strict licensing. The Central Bank’s Financial Infrastructure Transformation (FIT) programme and Dubai’s parallel VARA moves on the crypto side are pieces of the same regulated-fintech push.
For business, this means two things. First, practical: the real choice of payment providers in the UAE keeps widening, including for cross-border scenarios. Second, regulatory: any service that offers to hold customer money or to process payments must be either a bank or a licensed SVF/RPS provider. When picking a provider, check the licence status on the CBUAE portal (rulebook.centralbank.ae) — in-principle or full approval, whose provider exactly, and covering which products.
This story was prepared by the garant.consulting editorial team, based on the Fintech News UAE report, the Airwallex statement distributed via PRLog, and the published Central Bank of the UAE regulations. Published by Garant Business Consultancy DMCC, Dubai.
