Ziina becomes first UAE fintech to hold all three central bank authorisations

DUBAI — Ziina has become the first homegrown UAE fintech to hold all three Central Bank of the UAE authorisations, adding the new Retail Payment Services Category III licence to its earlier Stored Value Facilities and Exchange Business Category IV approvals.

The Category III licence covers merchant acquiring, payment aggregation and domestic transfers, moving Ziina from a wallet and exchange operator into full-stack payments infrastructure for businesses.

The scale markers in the announcement are substantial for a homegrown player: more than 500,000 annual customers, $1.5 billion in annualised payment volume, and usage by one in ten UAE SMEs. Ziina was founded by siblings Faisal, Sarah and Talal Toukan.

The triple-licence position builds a regulatory moat at the moment the central bank is tightening fintech authorisation across the board. Peers including Telda, Alaan, Qashio and Pyypl each hold subsets of the CBUAE licence stack, and the league table of who holds what is becoming a competitive scoreboard in UAE fintech.

Watch whether rivals move to close the licensing gap, and whether Ziina converts the acquiring licence into a merchant product launch within two quarters. Also watch CBUAE's next licensing decisions: each approval or rejection now reshapes the category map.

Wamda first reported the milestone.