PhonePe Wins In-Principle Clearance for Two UAE Payment Licences
The Indian payments company needs final approval before it can operate, and says its plans draw on the UAE's financial infrastructure programme.
Nadia Mansour Nadia Mansour covers fintech across the UAE and MENA for Anecdoted -- digital banking, payments licences and the startups building around them. nadia@anecdoted.com
PhonePe has won in-principle clearance from the Central Bank of the UAE for two payment licences. One covers Retail Payment Services and Card Schemes, or RPSCS. The other covers Stored Value Facilities, known as SVF.
The central bank completed its initial checks before issuing the decision. Final approval is still outstanding. Until it arrives, PhonePe cannot start doing business in the UAE.
The two categories cover different ground. Retail payment services and card schemes sit on the transaction side; stored value facilities govern prepaid balances. Holding both would let a firm move money and hold it.
PhonePe traced its UAE plans to the country's Financial Infrastructure Transformation programme, and cited the regulatory framework and the digital economy among its reasons for choosing the market. Ritesh Pai, the company's CEO and Executive Director for International Payments, described the UAE's vision and regulatory environment as an ideal setting for PhonePe's international journey.
The app is not new to the Emirates. Indian travellers already use it there under existing cross-border arrangements. With NPCI International Payments Limited, they scan local QR codes and pay at NEOPAY and Network International terminals.
A licence would shift who PhonePe serves. Visitors today; residents and merchants next, if the remaining requirements are met. The company intends to run the same technology in the UAE that it operates in India.
PhonePe says it will work alongside the UAE's existing payment systems rather than around them, and it plans to look at ways to support Aani and Jaywan, the domestic payment rails. After licensing, it expects to partner with banks in the region, payment companies holding licences, and local technology suppliers. It has also said its UAE operations would feed into the country's goal of becoming a cashless economy.
In India, PhonePe reports more than 700 million registered users and 50 million merchants. That base is the asset it would bring to the Gulf, where it would compete with established local payment providers.
What the Approval Signals
The UAE has spent recent years building domestic infrastructure — Aani for instant payments, Jaywan for cards — while also connecting to cross-border QR networks. A foreign app entering as a licensed entity, rather than as a guest on someone else's rails, tests whether payment habits formed in India carry over to a market with its own systems and its own rules.
The in-principle stage is a gate, not a finish line. PhonePe says it is working with authorities to meet the remaining requirements ahead of launch. No date has been set for the final approval.
