Dubai-based fintech Ziina said on 22 October 2026 that the Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE) has granted it a Retail Payment Services Category III licence and an Exchange Business Category IV authorisation. Combined with its 2024 Stored Value Facility licence, the company says the approvals make Ziina the first UAE-built fintech to hold all three CBUAE regulatory lines — payments, e-wallet and currency exchange — in a single product.
What CBUAE actually approved
According to Fintech News UAE and Mondo Visione, the company secured two key clearances. The Retail Payment Services Category III licence sits at the broader end of CBUAE's retail payments framework: it lets a provider offer domestic fund transfers, merchant acquiring and payment aggregation. The Exchange Business Category IV authorisation, per Fintech News UAE, was granted in August 2026 under Ziina's existing Stored Value Facility licence, and permits it to handle international money transfers and multi-currency foreign exchange digitally.
The foundation is the 2024 SVF licence, under which Ziina launched its digital wallet. The company says the new approvals complete its final regulatory layer with CBUAE.
What it means for UAE SMBs and expats
For small businesses and freelancers in the UAE, the shift is practical. A single app now bundles payment links, QR payments, Tap to Pay and an online payment gateway for merchant acceptance — tools that used to require separate acquirers and providers. For micro-businesses — cafés, services, home workshops, online sellers — this is an alternative to bank-tied POS terminals. If you are setting up a UAE business and sizing up your corporate stack, a licensed fintech acquirer is worth weighing alongside opening a corporate bank account in the UAE.
For expats and retail users, the Exchange Business Category IV clearance means international transfers and multi-currency FX can run through the Ziina app itself: a UAE-licensed fintech now owns its own CBUAE-approved channel for remittance corridors that used to be the preserve of money-transfer houses and banks.
Where it fits in the CBUAE ecosystem
CBUAE's regulation of retail payments is organised into categories of Retail Payment Services. Category III is one of the broadest in terms of permitted activities, and the parallel Exchange Business authorisation unlocks cross-border money transfers and FX. CBUAE has been steadily building out an ecosystem where licensed fintechs complement the banking rails — from the national payment card Jaywan to retail e-wallets and regulated remittance channels. A domestic player holding the full CBUAE stack sharpens competition and widens the choice set for SMB founders, expats and merchants operating in the UAE.
Backstory
Ziina is a Dubai-headquartered UAE fintech. The company says its digital wallet launched in 2024 under a CBUAE Stored Value Facility (SVF) licence. Co-founder and CEO Faisal Toukan, as paraphrased by Fintech News UAE, describes the ambition as pulling spending, storage of funds and overseas transfers into one app so users do not need to split their money across different services. Fintech News UAE renders this as a paraphrase, not a direct quote.
