Yalla Financial Solutions has received in-principle approval for cross-border payments in the UAE, the company . The approval, issued by the Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE) under its , covers a Retail Payment Services (RPS) Category II licence.
An in-principle approval is a conditional step, not a finished licence. Yalla still has to complete the CBUAE’s remaining requirements before the RPS Category II licence becomes final and the company can operate under it.
Waleed Sadek, chief executive and founder of Yalla Financial Solutions, said the approval “is a significant milestone in Yalla’s journey and reflects our unwavering commitment to building trusted, secure, and innovative payment infrastructure in one of the world’s most advanced digital economies.”
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Why the licence category matters
| Detail | Description |
|---|---|
| Regulator | Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE) |
| Framework | Retail Payment Services and Card Schemes Regulation |
| Licence categories | Four tiers, , based on the mix of services a provider offers |
| What separates Category II from Category III | Cross-border fund transfer capability. Adding cross-border transfers moves a provider from Category III to Category II and roughly doubles the minimum capital requirement at the higher tier |
| Services covered under the regulation | Nine service types across the four categories, including payment account issuance, payment instrument issuance, merchant acquiring, payment aggregation, domestic and cross-border fund transfers, payment token services, payment initiation, and payment account information services |
The cross-border distinction matters specifically for Yalla, which operates across four markets rather than one. A Category II licence, once finalised, would give it a UAE-licensed basis for the cross-border payment flows a multi-country platform needs, rather than routing them through partner banks or third-party rails alone.
How Yalla is built
Waleed Sadek is chief executive and founder of Yalla Financial Solutions. He is also , a payments technology company established in Cairo in 2017. Sadek previously spent time at Visa, where he led innovation and new technology for the Middle East and Africa before running the company’s strategy team across Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Paysky, in partnership with Visa, , offering bill payments, online shopping, salary disbursement for employers and merchant collection tools under the Yalla brand. Yalla Financial Solutions, the entity behind this week’s CBUAE approval, describes itself as an operating fintech across Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, running that consumer-facing Yalla Super App alongside a Yalla Merchant Super App for businesses.
An RPS Category II licence is a meaningful bar to clear precisely because of the cross-border requirement it carries. Domestic-only payment providers can operate under a Category III licence at a lower capital threshold; a provider that wants to move money across borders inside a regulated UAE licence has to meet the CBUAE’s higher bar. Yalla’s application signals that a platform already live across the Middle East and South Asia wants its cross-border payment infrastructure inside the UAE’s own regulatory perimeter, rather than layered on top of it through intermediaries.
