Emirates NBD's Liv Adds CBUAE-Registered USDU Stablecoin

Liv, Emirates NBD's digital bank, has added the USDU stablecoin to its app through partnerships with Universal Digital Intl, which issues the token, and Aquanow, which supplies the distribution infrastructure.

USDU is registered by the Central Bank of the UAE under its Payment Token Services Regulation. Each token is backed one-to-one by physical US dollar reserves held with UAE banks, and the reserves are verified through publicly available monthly attestations.

The three companies described the arrangement as the first integration of a stablecoin of this kind into digital banking in the UAE. Aquanow also provides the infrastructure behind Liv X, the crypto service Liv began offering in 2025, and holds a licence from Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority.

For customers, the addition keeps an everyday bank account and a digital asset portfolio in a single app, and it widens Liv's digital asset range to an asset priced in US dollars and covered by a domestic rulebook.

Rohit Garg, Group Head of Retail Products and Chief Digital Officer of Retail Banking and Wealth Management at Emirates NBD, said adding a CBUAE-registered stablecoin to Liv extends the bank's digital asset capabilities and gives customers a secure, transparent and regulated bridge to digital assets within ordinary banking.

Juha Viitala, Senior Executive Officer at Universal, said USDU was built to bring transparent, dollar-backed settlement into UAE regulatory frameworks.

Liv is charging no fees on crypto purchases and sales for three months to mark the integration. The offer covers new and experienced users alike.

Registration under the payment token rules changes what a bank has to check before listing a token. Reserve attestations and a domestic licence give compliance teams a defined instrument to review, rather than an offshore product whose backing they cannot inspect.