The VARA public register explained: who holds which licence in Dubai, by activity

The VARA register is on vara.ae under Licenses and Register, and VARA’s own FAQ points to it as the place to check whether a company holds a Dubai virtual asset licence. On 6 October 2026 it listed 57 licensed VASPs: 56 with status Active and Rain MENA FZE, licensed on 5 October 2026, with status Issued; the In-Principle Approval tab held 25 entries the same day, 23 of them live and 2 withdrawn. An IPA is not a licence: VARA bars IPA holders from any operations until the full licence issues. Binance FZE, Foris DAX Middle East FZE (Crypto.com), OKX Middle East Fintech FZE, Deribit FZE and Hashkey MENA FZE are among the 16 licensed for Exchange Services. Across the 57, 42 hold Broker-Dealer Services, 12 VA Management and Investment Services, 6 Custody Services, 5 Lending and Borrowing Services, 3 Advisory Services and 2 Category 1 VA Issuance, and none holds VA Transfer and Settlement Services. The register carries no as-at date, so every count here is as pulled on 6 October 2026.

This page owns the list, its categories and its dates. VARA fees, capital and timeline and choosing between VARA, ADGM and DIFC have their own pages.

Where the register is and how to read a row

The VARA Public Register has two tabs, LICENSED VASPs and IN-PRINCIPLE APPROVAL, with an activity filter. VARA’s own FAQ answers “how do I check a company” by pointing to it.

A licensed row carries seven columns: VASP Name, Licence Type, Reference, Licensed Activities, Licence Issued, Status and CMA Registration Number. Licensed Activities is the scope of the licence: a Broker-Dealer licensee is not licensed to run an exchange, and “Exchange Services (including VA Derivatives Trading)” is wider than “Exchange Services”. The CMA Registration Number is the federal layer: Article 9 of Cabinet Resolution No. 111 of 2022 (in force 14 January 2023) obliges local licensing authorities to supply licence data to the federal regulator, since 1 January 2026 the Capital Market Authority (CMA, formerly the SCA) under Federal Decree-Law No. 32 of 2025, issued 1 October 2025. VARA publishes no key to the number, so this page does not decode it.

The IPA tab uses different columns, including Activities Applied For and a Status of Issued or Withdrawn, not Active.

Who holds which licence, by activity

Schedule 1 of the VARA Regulations 2023 lists seven VA Activities; the VA Issuance Rulebook adds Category 1 VA Issuance. Schedule A counts the 57 licensed rows against those eight.

Activity counts total 86 across 57 entities: 19 licensees hold more than one activity and 38 hold one. Dates in brackets are Licence Issued dates; the names column is complete only where the note says so.

Custody is the exception: six holders, each a separate legal entity, because VARA’s licensed-activities page makes custody the one activity that must be segregated from the other licence categories and says that “a VA Custodian must be set up as a distinct legal entity with a standalone licence”, while every other activity may be aggregated under one licence. Two banks appear: Zand Bank P.J.S.C. (Custody Services, 9 December 2024) and Standard Chartered Bank (In-Principle Approval, 1 May 2026).

How the list has grown since July 2023

One caution on reading the count: the register is a present-tense document. Every row shows Active, save the newest at Issued, and none shows suspended or revoked, yet Article 20 of Dubai Law No. 4 of 2022 lets VARA suspend a permit for up to six months or revoke it, and on the register’s present form a revoked entity would no longer appear.

The In-Principle Approval tab: applications in progress, not licences

VARA defines the IPA on the register page as a conditional step: holders “are strictly prohibited from initiating operations, conducting any virtual asset activities, or servicing clients until they have obtained their full VASP licence from VARA”. An IPA row is evidence of an application in progress, nothing more.

On 6 October 2026 the tab showed 25 entries: 23 Issued and 2 Withdrawn, MuseTech VA FZCO (31 December 2025) and W P M E Technology L.L.C. (WadzPay, 25 April 2024). Of the 23 live IPAs, 18 were issued in 2026, 4 in 2025 and 1 in 2024. Applicants include Payward FZCO (Kraken, 13 May 2026) and Revolut Digital Assets FZE (5 June 2026). Rain MENA FZE, licensed on 5 October 2026 (VL/26/10/001), no longer appears on the IPA tab. The oldest still Issued is Bybit Fintech FZE, whose IPA for Exchange Services dates from 21 August 2024; the newest is WEXID Exchange FZE, 22 September 2026.

Counts total 33 across 23 applicants because several applied for more than one activity. Activities applied for are not activities licensed: VARA’s licence applications page says a licence may carry operational conditions. The document list is on the UAE VASP licensing checklist.

Who never appears on the register

The register lists licences and IPAs only. Four groups are absent by design.

Proprietary traders. VA Proprietary Trading needs a No Objection Certificate rather than a licence, and NoC holders are not published.

Category 2 token issuers. Category 1 VA Issuance needs a licence (Rule I.D.1 of the VA Issuance Rulebook); Category 2 issuers, placed through a Licensed Distributor, need no prior approval (Rule I.E.2), and Rule I.E.5 reads: “No Virtual Asset issued under Category 2 shall be deemed in any way to have been approved by VARA”. A Category 2 token therefore never has a register entry of its own.

Exempt Entities. Schedule 4 of the Regulations defines them as federal and Dubai government bodies and public, non-profit and charitable entities.

DIFC and ADGM firms. Article 3 of Law No. 4 of 2022 applies VARA’s regime to all zones across the emirate, including free zones, but excludes the Dubai International Financial Centre; ADGM sits in Abu Dhabi, outside the emirate VARA covers. Article 3(2) of Cabinet Resolution No. 111 of 2022 carves the financial free zones, digital securities under the federal securities regulator and Central Bank payment tokens out of the federal rules. A DIFC crypto business appears on the DFSA public register (1,244 firms on 6 October 2026); an ADGM firm on the ADGM Registration Authority and FSRA registers, which we could not fetch that day, so verify them directly. The application routes are on ADGM and DIFC crypto licensing.

A federal layer is forming above all three: on 13 April 2026 the CMA announced a Virtual Assets Framework of five core modules and eight regulated activities; we could not locate its text on the CMA site on 6 October 2026, so verify the activity list there. How Dubai, India, the EU and the US line up by activity is on crypto licence requirements by country.

A listing is not a clean record, and an absence is not an all-clear

The register answers one question: does this entity hold a VARA licence for this activity today. It says nothing about standing. CoinMENA FZE, licensed for Broker-Dealer Services on 30 November 2023 and still Active on 6 October 2026, received a Notice of Fines on 22 June 2026 for compliance failures in its internal systems and controls. Its register row records none of it.

The register’s mirror is VARA’s unlicensed VASPs page. On 6 October 2026 it carried 38 names with notice dates from 12 April 2023 (Open Technology Markets Ltd., trading as OPNX) to 13 January 2026 (Vesta Prime Portal Co. L.L.C.). VARA has also published two fine rounds against unlicensed firms: 7 firms on 9 October 2024 (AED 50,000 to AED 100,000 each) and 19 on 7 October 2025 (AED 100,000 to AED 600,000), the second citing breaches of the Marketing Regulations in force since 1 October 2024, which the crypto marketing rules insight owns.

Global brands are not exempt. MX Global LTD (MEXC) received a Notice of Fines on 22 June 2026 for unlicensed Broker-Dealer and/or Exchange Services to Dubai customers from 2022 to April 2026. Peken Global Limited (KuCoin) was ordered to cease and desist on 24 June 2026. Neither is on the licensed tab.

The rule behind both is Regulation III.A.1: no entity may carry out a VA Activity by way of business in the Emirate unless licensed by VARA, an employee of a licensed VASP or an Exempt Entity. Article 4 of Cabinet Resolution No. 111 of 2022 adds the counterparty side: dealing with an unlicensed VA business in the UAE is itself prohibited. What operating without a licence means for an operator is on the VARA licensing page.

The India leg: a VARA licence is not an FIU-IND registration

For founders with Indian users or capital, the register settles only the Dubai question. FIU-IND’s AML and CFT Guidelines for VDA service providers, updated 8 January 2026, state at paragraph 1.4 that the obligations are activity-based and apply irrespective of physical presence in India. A Dubai-licensed exchange serving Indian users must therefore register with FIU-IND; FIU-IND registration for crypto businesses in India owns the process, and the AML programme both regulators then expect is on building a crypto AML programme. India publishes no register, and FIU-IND has not made its list public. Annexure I to a Lok Sabha answer of 30 March 2026 names the 54 entities registered as on 9 March 2026, and the FIU-IND registered VASP list transcribes it. Peken Global Limited sits at row 41 while unlicensed in Dubai.

Indian capital behind a Dubai VASP raises a question the register cannot answer: whether the entity is a financial services activity under the Foreign Exchange Management (Overseas Investment) Rules 2022 (22 August 2022). If it is, Schedule III bars a resident individual from funding it and Schedule I, paragraph 2 confines an Indian company to its conditions. No official text fetched on 6 October 2026 settles the point, so verify it with the AD bank before remitting. LRS vs ODI for Indian founders owns the how-to and the round-tripping insight owns Rule 19(3).

Frequently asked questions

Further reading

VARA licensing service · VARA licence cost, capital and timeline · VARA vs ADGM vs DIFC · UAE VASP licensing checklist · FIU-IND registered VASP list · Crypto licence requirements by country

General information for counterparty and licence-scope diligence, not legal advice on any entity’s status. Counts, names and dates were read row by row from the VARA Public Register, its In-Principle Approval tab and its unlicensed VASPs page on 6 October 2026 and are re-pulled on each review; legal references were checked against the primary texts cited above. A register entry is a licence for the activities named and nothing more; absence is not a finding against anyone.