Revolut has received in-principle approval from Dubai’s to offer cryptocurrency services in the UAE, covering broker-dealer, management and investment, and exchange services through its retail app and its standalone exchange platform, Revolut X.
The approval completes Revolut’s UAE regulatory stack. In June 2026, the , itself the conclusion of a nine-month process that began with an in-principle CBUAE approval in September 2025.
What the VARA approval covers
Joseph Khair, head of Revolut Digital Assets in the UAE, said the approval “lays the foundation for Revolut to introduce its trusted virtual asset services within a regulated environment.” Revolut has not set a specific date for launching virtual asset services, saying it will build out infrastructure and operational capabilities before a full-scale rollout. The company has more than 75 million customers globally and has never operated physical branches, relying entirely on its app.
A full UAE stack, built in stages
Revolut’s UAE entry has moved in three regulatory steps: an in-principle CBUAE approval in September 2025, the stored value facilities and retail payment services licences in June 2026, and now VARA’s in-principle approval for crypto. Revolut has said it is preparing for a full-scale UAE launch in late 2026. Founder and chief executive Nikolay Storonsky has relocated from the UK to the UAE, though Revolut has not detailed how that move relates to the company’s regulatory strategy in the country.
Also, read Revolut Secures SVF and RPS Category II Licenses from the CBUAE.
Why holding UAE Crypto and Payments licence types matters
The UAE splits regulatory oversight of money and crypto between two separate authorities. The Central Bank of the UAE governs conventional payments and stored value, the licences Revolut secured in June. VARA governs virtual assets specifically, covering exchanges, brokers and custodians of crypto. One licence doesn’t substitute for the other: a VARA approval alone doesn’t let a firm move fiat currency or issue stored value, and a CBUAE payment licence alone doesn’t permit crypto trading or custody.
Holding both means Revolut can, in principle, run fiat payments, stored value and regulated crypto services from a single licensed entity, rather than routing crypto activity through a separate partner exchange or routing fiat rails through a separate banking relationship.
That combination is still uncommon in the UAE. The Central Bank has granted virtual-asset-related approvals to only a handful of entities so far, three or more as of July 2026, and Foris DAX Middle East, which operates Crypto.com in the region, is the most prominent other firm to have paired a VARA licence with CBUAE stored value approval. Most VARA-licensed exchanges operate crypto services only, without a matching CBUAE payments licence alongside them.
For a Revolut customer, the practical upside is fewer hops between systems: moving money between currencies, cards and virtual assets could sit inside one regulated app instead of requiring a transfer to an external exchange. Revolut hasn’t yet detailed how the two licence types will connect inside its product, since virtual asset services haven’t launched.
Part of a wider MiCA-driven shift
Revolut’s UAE build-out lands as the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation reshapes where crypto firms choose to operate. MiCA applies across a market of roughly 500 million people in the European Economic Area, and OKX’s Europe chief executive, Erald Ghoos, has said as many as 80% of crypto companies will not survive it, according to .
Irina Heaver, a Dubai-based crypto lawyer at NeosLegal, said enquiries from European founders ‘skyrocketed’ ahead of MiCA’s 1 July 2026 deadline, with her firm now fielding more than 120 a week, about half of them from Europe. “They’re looking to move themselves and their wealth and their ideas and their intellectual potential to a country that welcomes them,” she said, adding: “I can see a brain drain. I can see a tax drain and also the loss of jobs.”
Not every crypto firm eyeing the UAE is the size of Revolut. But a top-10 global neobank completing a full licence stack, covering payments, stored value and now crypto, in the same window as MiCA squeezes European crypto firms, is a concrete example of the shift Heaver and others have described in general terms.
