Ant International, the group behind Alipay+, has received two full licences from the Central Bank of the UAE: a Retail Payment Services and Card Schemes (Category II) licence and a Stored Value Facilities (SVF) licence. Ant announced the licences on 14 October, 14 months after the central bank gave it in-principle approval for both.
Ant says the retail payments licence is an important step towards Antom, its merchant payments business, offering merchant acquiring in the UAE. The SVF licence lets WorldFirst, its global accounts business, offer cross-border financial services in the country. The announcement gives no launch date for either.
What Ant plans to offer
Leiming Chen, Ant International’s chief sustainability officer and senior vice president, called the licences a ‘crucial milestone’ and linked them to the UAE’s ‘We are UAE 2031’ digitalisation plan. He said Ant plans to launch AI-driven payment and account products under the central bank’s rules.
Ant says Antom connects merchants to more than 300 payment methods in over 200 markets and 140 currencies. Once it launches in the UAE, Antom’s AI-integrated services are meant to help local merchants serve domestic and overseas shoppers in store and online. Ant says WorldFirst has served more than 1.6 million customers and supports payments in over 100 currencies.
From approval to licence
Ant received in-principle approval for the same two licence categories in August 2025, Electronic Payments International reported, alongside a memorandum of understanding with the Abu Dhabi Investment Office. An in-principle approval is a required step before a full licence is granted.
At that stage Ant said a full licence would let it offer merchant acquiring, payment aggregation, e-wallet issuance and domestic and cross-border fund transfers in the UAE. The Asian Banker carried the same list. Ant hasn’t said what it had to complete between the two approvals.
Alipay+ keeps running as before
Ant says merchants in the UAE can already accept cross-border payments from digital wallet users through Alipay+, using partnerships with locally licensed banks and acquirers. It states that this continues independently of the new licences. The licences therefore change what Ant can do through Antom and WorldFirst, not how Alipay+ payments are accepted today.
The licences also follow Ant’s , announced six days earlier. In that announcement Ant said its Middle East expansion would support Alipay+, Antom and WorldFirst.
What isn’t known
Ant hasn’t named the UAE merchants or banks it expects to work with, said how many merchants it targets, or given pricing. It also hasn’t said whether Antom and WorldFirst will launch together or one after the other. The announcement carries a disclaimer that it isn’t an endorsement by the central bank, and the licensed activities remain subject to the central bank’s supervision.
