ARP Digital Secures VARA Broker-Dealer Licence in Dubai

ARP Digital has been granted a broker-dealer licence by Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA). The approval upgrades the in-principle clearance the Bahrain-based firm received in April. It also gives ARP Digital a second regulated home in the Gulf, placing the UAE alongside its native Bahrain.

The licence permits ARP Digital to act on regulated conversions between digital assets, stablecoins and the UAE dirham. Its counterparties are meant to be UAE-domiciled corporates, capital markets participants and qualified investors. The firm describes itself as a regulated gateway for deploying digital asset wealth into local UAE assets.

That gateway was absent in practice, according to ARP Digital. The company says UAE institutions and individuals lacked a compliant pathway to bring digital asset wealth into the local financial system. The market is not small. Across 2024 and 2025 the UAE received over $56 billion in digital asset value, the largest concentration of it in the Gulf.

Abdulaziz Kanoo, co-founder of ARP Digital, called the Dubai licence a defining milestone for the business and said it reinforces the firm's compliance-first approach. His co-founder, Abdulla Kanoo, put the opportunity in plainer terms. Corporate appetite for digital assets in the UAE has always existed, he said. What was missing was regulated infrastructure for deploying those assets at scale.

The Kanoos are fifth-generation members of the Kanoo Group, a 135-year-old GCC merchant family conglomerate. They founded ARP Digital in Bahrain, where the firm holds a Category 3 Capital Markets Crypto Assets Service Provider licence from the Central Bank of Bahrain. That licence has already been used heavily. ARP Digital says it has processed more than $3.5 billion in volume for more than 450 institutional and corporate counterparties, and the firm recorded fourfold year-on-year growth in 2025.

Dubai's licensing rhythm is picking up, and the new approval arrived in company. On the same day, VARA issued a full broker-dealer licence to Flowdesk, a crypto market maker backed by Coinbase Ventures and BlackRock. VARA was created in 2022 and reached its 50th virtual asset service provider licence in July. A growing cluster of regulated intermediaries in one market tends to invite more serious institutional participation, and the Kanoo family's long Gulf history gives ARP Digital a profile few entrants can match.

Beyond the licence, ARP Digital has been building settlement infrastructure. The firm partnered with Bank of Bahrain and Kuwait to construct regulated stablecoin settlement rails. If those rails work as intended, the Dubai licence gives ARP Digital both the venue and the plumbing to move digital assets into dirhams for the institutions it now has permission to serve.