Payward — the parent company behind Kraken — has cleared every regulatory hurdle needed to provide cryptocurrency trading and virtual asset services across the UAE, with Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority granting the firm Full Market Product Approval under its licensed Virtual Asset Service Provider framework, a designation that allows Payward to begin accepting retail, professional, and institutional clients in the country.
A preliminary green light for Payward had come through as far back as May 2026. That same month, VARA issued a conditional go-ahead covering a range of planned operations spanning broker-dealer functions, investment activity, and asset management. Before launching operations, Payward was required to satisfy a set of additional conditions laid down by regulators.
With full market approval secured, the firm gains the authority to conduct regulated activities within the scope of that designation. Details about the services set to be available were laid out in a statement from the organisation.
Dirham-denominated account funding and withdrawals, alongside spot and margin trading pairs priced in the UAE currency, are among the features set to reach UAE customers when the platform goes live. Qualified Kraken account holders will be able to move funds into and out of the platform using UAE Dirhams, following the exchange's addition of native support for the local currency. Traders holding AED-denominated crypto pairs can move funds directly into positions without first running deposits through a fiat-to-fiat exchange step. No details about which cryptocurrencies would be paired with AED at launch were included in the announcement.
Under the approved framework, spot and margin trading both become available, while Kraken and Prime platforms open up OTC execution channels exclusively for institutional clients. Among the offerings set to serve institutional clients are spot trading on open markets, the Kraken Prime platform, on-chain staking, tokenised equity products under the xStocks label, and crypto transfer capabilities through Kraken.
Under the UAE offering, Payward indicated that traders would gain entry to Kraken's exchange infrastructure and its broader liquidity pool. Arjun Sethi, who holds the co-CEO role at both Payward and Kraken, noted that UAE-based traders would have access to the same order book available in other markets, adding in a statement that clients there would also benefit from the same multi-asset coverage operating across every other market, all within what he described as one of the more transparent regulatory environments globally.
Payward's trading services are set to become available to businesses operating at the regional level, giving them a new avenue to broaden their existing financial product lines. Trading infrastructure held by Payward is set to be directed toward the benefit of partners operating across the region. Payward gave no indication of when the product would become available to customers.
Building on its collaboration with the London Stock Exchange to bring conventional equities onto blockchain infrastructure, Payward has pushed further into the UAE as part of a broader drive toward tokenised financial instruments. Under the arrangement disclosed in September, LSE and Payward are set to convert the equities of London's 100 largest listed companies into digital tokens through the xStocks tokenisation protocol, laying groundwork for those instruments to be traded on the exchange's planned round-the-clock platform.
Each xStock corresponds to one unit of the actual security it represents. Holders of these blockchain-based tokens can buy or sell around the clock on certain centralised exchanges, keep the assets in personal wallets, and connect them to applications running directly on-chain.
