Rain, the Bahrain-based crypto brokerage and custodian, has a full licence from Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) for exchange and broker-dealer services. The licence was issued on 5 October, according to VARA’s public register, eight days before Rain announced it on 13 October.
The register lists Rain MENA FZE under licence VL/26/10/001, as a virtual asset service provider licence for exchange services and broker-dealer services. It allows the firm to serve retail, qualified and institutional investors. Rain’s announcement doesn’t give a licence number or an issue date.
Rain says the broker-dealer permission includes margin trading, which lets clients borrow to take larger positions. The register entry lists the two activity categories but not margin trading as a separate line, and VARA advises checking the full record of regulated activities.
A day before Kraken
The next licence reference on the register, VL/26/10/002, belongs to Payward FZCO, the parent of the US exchange Kraken.
The two licences differ in scope. Payward’s covers broker-dealer services and management and investment services. Rain’s includes exchange services, the category for operating a trading venue. Rain’s director Laurent Girouille said: “We are a regional platform with global intent, and Dubai is where that becomes practical.”
Rain and Kraken also have a commercial link. In June, Rain said it had launched tokenised equities with Kraken, available to customers of its Bahrain entity. That product runs under the Central Bank of Bahrain’s framework, and neither company has said it will extend to Dubai.
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Rain’s route to Dubai
VARA granted Rain in-principle approval for exchange, broker-dealer and margin trading in May, according to Rain’s announcement dated 7 May. Rain already held a Category 3 crypto-asset services licence from the Central Bank of Bahrain and a permission from Abu Dhabi Global Market’s financial regulator, which Reuters reported in 2023.
Rain says it has more than 2 million customers and has processed more than $11 billion in trading volume since it was founded in 2017. It raised $110 million at a $500 million valuation in 2022, according to Reuters and Rain.
Its banking arrangements are already in place elsewhere. In May, Rain said Standard Chartered would provide banking services in Bahrain and the UAE, including segregated client money accounts and fiat settlement in dirhams, Bahraini dinars and US dollars. Rain’s Abu Dhabi arm also added Pay by Bank funding through Lean in May, under the UAE’s Open Finance framework.
What hasn’t been said
Rain hasn’t given a date for starting Dubai services, said which assets it will list, or what leverage it will offer on margin trading. It hasn’t said whether Rain MENA FZE will use the Standard Chartered accounts or the Pay by Bank funding route.
