UAE Dirham Stablecoin DDSC Clears Central Bank Hurdle for VARA Exchange Listings
A no objection certificate from the Central Bank of the UAE lets the dirham-pegged DDSC go live on selected VARA-regulated exchanges, opening a route from institutional settlement to retail use.
DDSC, a stablecoin pegged one-to-one to the UAE dirham, has secured a No Objection Certificate from the Central Bank of the UAE. The certificate clears it to go live on selected exchange platforms regulated by the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority. The approval is conditional: the issuer must still satisfy specific central bank requirements.
The token is backed by IHC, First Abu Dhabi Bank and Sirius International Holding. Settlement runs on ADI Chain, an institutional Layer-2 blockchain developed by the ADI Foundation.
The consortium behind DDSC says the stablecoin has processed more than AED 150 million in transactions since its initial institutional launch. That figure reflects settlement between institutions, not consumer payments.
From settlement rails toward the shop counter
The next stage pushes DDSC toward daily transactions by businesses and consumers. That shift does not follow automatically from a regulatory green light. Broader retail and merchant adoption depends on how the rollout proceeds across the selected platforms, and the conditions attached to the certificate have to be met first.
Syed Basar Shueb, chief executive of IHC, described the certificate as another important milestone in developing the UAE's regulated digital financial ecosystem. The next phase, he said, extends DDSC's potential reach to businesses and individuals after an institutional-scale demonstration of the model.
The framework is built so that merchants and retail users transact in a familiar unit of account, the dirham, rather than pricing in a foreign token and converting at the edges. Once the platforms go live, the blockchain infrastructure underneath is intended to shorten settlement times.
A local option beside the dollar tokens
Most of the stablecoin supply circulating in digital asset markets is denominated in US dollars. A dirham-backed token gives UAE businesses a way to hold and move value in the currency their invoices, payroll and tax filings are already written in, which removes a conversion step and the exchange-rate exposure that comes with it. Whether that advantage reaches the till is a separate question. A merchant weighing a dirham token against a card terminal will look at settlement speed, integration cost and whether customers ask for it.
The certificate covers selected VARA-regulated venues rather than the market as a whole, so availability will vary by platform. The AED 150 million already processed shows the rails clearing at institutional scale. Retail volume is the harder test.
