India's PhonePe gets in-principle UAE Central Bank nod for two payment licences

DUBAI — PhonePe, India's largest UPI payments company, has received in-principle approval from the Central Bank of the UAE for two payment licences, Zawya reports, setting up a UAE launch.

The approvals are in-principle, with full licences still to come. The entry targets the world's most valuable remittance corridor: the UAE is the largest sender of remittances into India, and PhonePe dominates the receiving end of that flow at home.

The UAE-to-India corridor is the world's largest remittance route, and PhonePe's position at the receiving end of it gives it a structural reason to exist at the sending end too. CBUAE in-principle approvals have become the standard on-ramp for major foreign fintechs entering the Emirates, with full licences typically following within months for applicants with PhonePe's compliance depth.

The read: this is a corridor strategy, not a market-entry experiment: own both ends of the UAE-to-India flow and you own a fee stream measured in billions. Expect PhonePe's first UAE products to serve the Indian expatriate base directly, with merchant payments to follow once the remittance hook is set.