Foloosi has received In-Principle Approval from the Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE) for a Category III payments licence, under the Retail Payment Services and Card Schemes Regulation.

The regulation sorts payment providers into four tiers based on how complex their services are.

It marks a step toward Foloosi’s final licence, with the company still working through the central bank’s remaining requirements.

Foloosi began as an online payment gateway and has since expanded into payment acceptance, payment links, invoicing, subscriptions, QR payments, Tap to Phone and point-of-sale tools.

“Our focus now is to complete the remaining regulatory requirements and continue building Foloosi into a trusted payments infrastructure company for the UAE,”

said Omar Bin Brek, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Foloosi.

The payments firm says its platform is being designed around several AI capabilities, including transaction intelligence to flag unusual patterns, real-time fraud and risk analysis, and payment orchestration to route transactions.

The design also extends to merchant intelligence tools and automated reconciliation.

Over time, Foloosi plans to introduce agentic infrastructure that would let authorised AI agents interact with its systems under defined policies, permissions and controls.

Foloosi will continue working with the CBUAE to meet the remaining conditions for its final licence.

The company, co-founded by Omar Bin Brek and Mohan K, plans to keep investing in payment infrastructure, AI, fraud and risk technology, merchant intelligence, security and payment operations.

Featured image: Edited by Fintech News UAE, based on image by Foloosi via its Press Release and starmultikharisma via Magnific.