Sinder has launched a staged beta in the UAE combining an AED account with a local IBAN and a Mastercard Platinum debit card, offering 0% FX markup on international spending up to AED 40,000 a month.
What the UAE travel card actually offers
The Dubai-based fintech charges no annual or monthly subscription fee. Customers spend internationally directly from their AED balance at the Mastercard Exchange Rate, with no markup within the AED 40,000 monthly allowance. Spending beyond that adds a 0.5% weekday or 1.5% weekend markup on the excess only. The account and card are provided by Ruya Community Islamic Bank, with Network International handling card processing.
Chris Hughes, Sinder’s founder and chief executive, said “UAE residents travel frequently, but the cost of spending abroad is often obscured by exchange rates, card fees and complex rewards structures.” He co-founded the company with Artem Kuchumov; both previously worked at Revolut and Tamara.
How it compares with Wio Personal
Wio, the digital bank backed by ADQ, Alpha Dhabi, e& and First Abu Dhabi Bank, offers a similar zero-fee pitch through Wio Personal, but structured differently. says customers get zero international transaction fees when spending from one of six pre-loaded currency accounts: AED, GBP, EUR, USD, CAD, AUD or CHF, provided the funds are already sitting in that currency before the trip.
Sinder’s model doesn’t require pre-funding a specific currency. Its 0% allowance applies to spending directly from an AED balance, converted at the point of sale, up to the AED 40,000 monthly threshold. The practical difference: a Wio customer travelling somewhere outside its six supported currencies, or spending without planning ahead, may not get the same zero-fee treatment Sinder offers by default.
Two much bigger rivals, still not live
Sinder has beaten two far larger competitors to an actual UAE launch, despite both holding relevant regulatory approvals for longer. Wise secured a stored value facilities licence and a Category 2 retail payment services licence from the Central Bank of the UAE in October 2025, the same two licence types Revolut later obtained in June 2026. Wise has said the approvals mark a step towards bringing Wise Account and Wise Business “to personal and business customers in the UAE in the future,” without giving a date.
In the meantime, Wise’s own site tells UAE-addressed users it “can no longer offer multi-currency accounts” to them “due to a recent regulatory update,” a restriction that in fact traces back to a 2020 change, not a new one. The Wise Debit Card also remains unavailable to UAE addresses as of April 2026.
Revolut, for its part, spent the first half of 2026 building out its own : the same stored value and retail payment services licences in June, plus an in-principle approval for crypto services in July. It hasn’t launched full retail service in the country either.
Both companies, in other words, have spent months or years collecting the regulatory permissions to operate in the UAE. Neither has yet turned that into an account a UAE resident can actually open. Sinder, working through a bank partnership rather than a licence of its own, already has.
Early numbers, and the market it’s entering
As of the beta’s launch on 20 July 2026, Sinder had 173 accounts created organically, 62 active customers, 33 funded accounts, and 11 customers who had completed 106 card transactions worth more than AED 8,400. Those are small figures for a company entering a crowded space, though staged betas exist to test operations before a wider rollout, not to prove scale.
Sinder is entering a for prepaid cards and digital wallets across the Middle East, projected to reach $63.3 billion by 2030. Multi-currency, travel-focused prepaid products are one track within that market, distinct from domestic scheme-linked cards such as the UAE’s Jaywan.
