Payward, the parent company of Kraken, has received preliminary approval from Dubai's Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA) for a broker-dealer, investment and management licence, marking Kraken's formal entry into the UAE market.
The approval will allow Kraken to offer UAE clients spot, margin, and OTC trading, staking, and institutional access through Kraken Prime. A locally regulated Payward subsidiary will also enable clients to fund and withdraw in dirhams (AED), connecting UAE traders directly to Kraken's global orderbooks. Derivatives and lending products for qualified clients are planned for a later phase, pending additional regulatory approval.
The authorisation is preliminary rather than final. Most applications in Dubai move from preliminary approval to full licensure within three to six months, and Kraken will not be able to activate local operations or AED trading pairs until that final licence is issued.
Arjun Sethi, co-CEO of Payward and Kraken, framed the approval in terms of Dubai's regulatory head-start. "Dubai wrote a rulebook for crypto before most jurisdictions even acknowledged the asset class," Sethi said in a statement on Thursday. "That clarity is why real liquidity and institutional capital now sit in the UAE. Operating under VARA puts Kraken inside that perimeter, serving clients through a local, supervised entity rather than from offshore."
VARA , established in 2022, has become one of the more active crypto regulators globally, granting licences to Binance, Bybit, OKX, and a range of other major exchanges. Dubai's approach – creating a dedicated virtual asset regulator rather than grafting crypto onto existing financial services law – has attracted significant institutional capital and positioned the emirate as the leading crypto hub for the MENA region.
Kraken's UAE entry is part of a broader push to establish regulated, on-the-ground operations in key financial centres. The exchange operates global orderbooks with deep liquidity across major markets in Europe, the US, and APAC, which UAE clients will access through the new locally regulated entity.
