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ARP Digital has secured a Broker-Dealer licence from Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), upgrading the in-principle approval it received in April and making the UAE its second regulated Gulf market.
The licence lets the Bahrain-headquartered firm offer UAE-domiciled corporates, capital markets participants, and qualified investors regulated conversion between digital assets, stablecoins, and the UAE dirham.
ARP Digital positions itself as the regulated gateway for deploying digital asset wealth into local UAE assets, targeting a market that received more than $56 billion in digital asset value across 2024 and 2025, the largest such concentration in the Gulf.
The firm said institutions and individuals in the UAE have long held significant digital asset wealth without a compliant pathway to deploy that capital locally, a gap it aims to close through governance, compliance standards, and transparency.
Abdulaziz Kanoo
“Securing this licence is a defining milestone for our business and reinforces our commitment to a compliance-first approach,” said Abdulaziz Kanoo, Co-Founder of ARP Digital.
Co-Founder Abdulla Kanoo said corporate appetite for digital assets in markets like the UAE has always existed, but the regulated infrastructure to deploy that capital at scale had been missing until now.
ARP Digital already holds a Category 3 Capital Markets Crypto Assets Service Provider licence from the Central Bank of Bahrain, under which it has processed more than $3.5 billion in volume for over 450 institutional and corporate counterparties, with fourfold year-on-year growth in 2025.
The firm was founded by Abdulaziz and Abdulla Kanoo, fifth-generation members of the Kanoo Group, a 135-year-old GCC merchant family conglomerate.
VARA issued its 50th virtual asset service provider licence in July, reflecting the pace of institutional licensing activity in Dubai since the regulator’s 2022 launch.
