Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority has granted ARP Digital FZCO an active broker-dealer license, adding a regulated institutional conversion provider to the emirate’s digital-asset market.
VARA’s public register lists the license as issued on August 7, 2026, under reference VL/26/07/03. The register identifies broker-dealer services as the authorized activity and shows the license as active. That official record is the clearest evidence of the firm’s regulatory status; it is distinct from an in-principle approval, which VARA says does not permit a company to begin virtual-asset activities.
ARP Digital announced the license on August 12. The company said it would use the authorization to offer UAE-domiciled companies, capital-markets participants and qualified investors conversions between digital assets, including stablecoins, and the UAE dirham. Cointelegraph independently reported the approval and the intended institutional client scope.
A regulated conversion point for digital capital
The license matters to payment and treasury teams because conversion into local currency is often where a digital-asset workflow meets banking, compliance and settlement controls. A stablecoin transfer can move value across a blockchain, but a business still needs a regulated counterparty when the transaction requires dirham liquidity, local bank settlement or deployment into conventional assets.
ARP Digital describes its role as a gateway for converting digital-asset capital into local currency. The license does not by itself prove that every prospective corridor, banking integration or settlement product is live. Those operating details—including supported tokens, fees, settlement times, bank counterparties and geographic availability—were not specified in the regulatory register or the reviewed announcement.
For prospective institutional users, the practical diligence questions therefore move beyond whether the provider is licensed. Treasury and compliance teams will need to understand which entity is their counterparty, how customer and wallet screening are performed, when a conversion becomes final, where fiat funds are held, and what happens if a transfer is delayed or rejected. The VARA authorization supplies a regulatory perimeter for broker-dealer activity, but it does not replace those transaction-level controls.
ARP Digital extends its Gulf regulatory footprint
The Dubai authorization gives ARP Digital a second regulated Gulf market alongside Bahrain. The company says its Bahrain operation holds a Category 3 crypto-asset service provider license from the Central Bank of Bahrain. It also reports processing more than $3.5 billion for over 450 institutional and corporate counterparties; those figures are company-provided and were not independently verified in the reviewed regulatory records.
The two-market footprint could be useful for institutions that manage liquidity across Gulf jurisdictions, but the licenses should not be treated as interchangeable. Each regulated entity operates under its own authorization, client scope and local obligations. Customers need to know which company contracts with them and which regulator governs a particular conversion or settlement flow.
ARP Digital’s entry also adds another option to Dubai’s growing roster of licensed virtual-asset brokers. Competition among regulated providers may improve access to digital-asset liquidity, but adoption will depend on execution quality as much as licensing: transparent pricing, reliable fiat settlement, banking connectivity and clear responsibility when payments fail remain central to institutional use.