In a significant regulatory milestone for the Middle Eastern fintech ecosystem, consumer and enterprise financial platform Ziina has secured its Retail Payment Services Category III license and gained regulatory authorization to conduct Exchange Business Category IV activities from the Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE). With these approvals, Ziina becomes the first homegrown UAE financial technology company to hold regulatory permissions spanning stored value facilities, retail payment services, and digital currency exchange.
The dual authorization marks the completion of Ziina’s phased licensing trajectory with the CBUAE, providing the company with an independent regulatory perimeter to operate a comprehensive financial platform. By combining these authorizations into a unified infrastructure, Ziina can offer an integrated suite of services—spanning consumer deposits, merchant acceptance, domestic real-time settlement, and cross-border money transfers—within a single proprietary application layer.
A Unified Three-Pillar Regulatory Architecture
Rather than relying on third-party sponsorship or fragmented intermediary partnerships, Ziina’s newly expanded licensing structure gives the company direct regulatory oversight across three core operational pillars:
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Stored Value Facility (SVF): Originally granted by the CBUAE in June 2024, the SVF license authorizes the firm to hold customer balances, operate digital wallets, and safeguard fiat funds.
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Retail Payment Services (Category III): Expands the platform’s merchant acquiring, payment aggregation, and domestic fund transfer capabilities. The license provides regulatory authorization for Ziina’s commercial acceptance tools, including online payment gateways, customizable payment links, QR code transactions, and soft-POS Tap to Pay functionality across iOS and Android devices.
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Exchange Business (Category IV): Formally authorized under its SVF framework in August 2026, this permission allows Ziina to facilitate international money transfers and multi-currency foreign exchange digitally, enabling users to remit funds cross-border directly through the Ziina app.
“We’re thankful for the continued support of the Central Bank of the UAE,” stated Faisal Toukan, co-founder and CEO of Ziina. “These licenses give us the regulatory framework to build faster and go further. When we launched Ziina in the UAE, we believed that we could build the next generation of financial products from this market, for the region. Today, people use different apps and providers for different parts of their financial lives. We want to bring more financial services into one platform, from spending and holding money to sending it abroad. Our ambition is to take what we build here to enable financial freedom across the Arab world.”
Commercial Scale and SME Market Penetration
Founded in 2020 by Faisal Toukan, Sarah Toukan, and Talal Toukan, Ziina has evolved from a peer-to-peer mobile payments provider into a critical operational engine for the UAE business sector. The platform currently serves more than 500,000 active retail and enterprise customers annually and processes over $1.5 billion in annualized transaction volume.
Significantly, the platform is now utilized by one in ten small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across the UAE, supported by its transparent pricing model and native merchant features such as the Ziina Card (compatible with Apple Pay and Google Pay) and the Ziina Violet lifestyle membership offering fee-free foreign transactions.
Capitalizing on UAE Digital Payment Velocity
Ziina’s expanded regulatory status coincides with rapid growth across the UAE’s domestic payment infrastructure. According to the CBUAE’s Annual Report 2025, retail fund transfers executed through the UAE Funds Transfer System (UAEFTS) reached AED 9.9 trillion across 114.9 million transactions in 2025. This represents an annual increase of 19.9 per cent in total transaction value and 17.8 per cent in transaction volume, reflecting an accelerating regional migration toward cashless rails and instant digital settlement.
By combining direct regulatory licensing with full-stack merchant and consumer capabilities, Ziina is establishing a scalable blueprint to capture regional market share as digital payments, commercial acquiring, and international remittances continue to consolidate into unified platforms across the Arab world.
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