Beyond Crypto Access: How ARP Digital Is Building the UAE’s Digital Capital Infrastructure

When ARP Digital announced its new Broker-Dealer licence from Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) last week, the headline was straightforward: the Bahrain-based digital capital infrastructure firm had entered the UAE with a second regulated market. However, the significance of the licence goes beyond geographic expansion.

For ARP Digital, the Dubai operation is designed to address a practical problem that increasingly sits at the intersection of digital assets and traditional finance: how can institutions holding digital assets move in and out of local currency and the traditional financial system without taking on the regulatory, operational and balance-sheet complexity of handling crypto themselves?

Speaking to UNLOCK Blockchain, Abdulaziz Kanoo, Co-Founder of ARP Digital, described the UAE operation as a regulated conversion layer between digital assets and the local financial system, with stablecoins at the centre of that infrastructure.

The company says its client base already spans some of the UAE’s leading banks, exchange houses, superapps, fintechs, payment companies, import and export businesses, commodity firms and real estate developers. In fact, ARP Digital closed 2025 with $3.7 billion in transaction volume and says growth has accelerated through 2026.

The Dubai licence now allows the company to bring that model directly into the UAE market, with AED settlement through local banking infrastructure and direct onboarding of UAE-domiciled corporates, capital markets participants and qualified investors.

Turning Digital Assets into Something Businesses Can Actually Use

One of the clearest use cases is not necessarily a company that wants to become a crypto business. It is a conventional company that simply has a customer, supplier, or counterparty using digital assets.

Kanoo points to merchants as an example. An international buyer may want to pay using digital assets, while the merchant may be willing to accept the transaction but unable, or unwilling, to hold crypto on its balance sheet or explain crypto-originated funds to its bank.

Under ARP Digital’s model, the digital asset can be converted at the point of purchase, allowing the merchant to receive dirhams through conventional banking channels while maintaining an audit trail.

The merchant therefore does not need to build an internal digital-asset operation or take on the associated price risk.

The same infrastructure can apply to corporate treasury activity. UAE companies with international payables can convert between stablecoins and AED for local working capital or supplier payments, with ARP Digital supporting T+0 or T+1 settlement through its UAE-regulated entity and local banking relationships.

That is where the company's proposition moves beyond simply offering another crypto trading venue. The focus is on making digital assets usable within existing corporate financial processes.

Dubai's Commodities Market Offers Another Test Case

The commodities sector provides an even more direct illustration of why this infrastructure may matter.

According to Kanoo, commodity trading houses in Dubai, particularly those dealing in gold, are increasingly using stablecoins to settle with international suppliers because they can be faster and cheaper than traditional correspondent banking routes.

The problem comes on the other side of the transaction.

A trading company may hold dirhams domestically but need to acquire stablecoins to settle an international payment. Without a licensed counterparty capable of handling that conversion, businesses can be pushed towards less regulated channels, creating precisely the compliance concerns that the UAE's regulatory framework is designed to address.

ARP Digital's Dubai operation is intended to provide that regulated bridge.

The potential applications extend beyond gold to diamonds, precious metals and oil and gas, sectors in which large-value international transactions and cross-border settlement are already central to the business model.

Stablecoins Are Becoming the Institutional Transport Layer

At launch, ARP Digital says it is primarily focused on USD-referenced stablecoins, particularly USDT and USDC, for conversion into and out of dirham.

That focus reflects the current structure of institutional digital-asset liquidity. While Bitcoin and Ether can also be accommodated for institutional-sized transactions, Kanoo says the overwhelming majority of the firm's existing desk volume is already concentrated in stablecoins rather than more volatile digital assets.

For institutions, the attraction is relatively simple: a stablecoin can act as the mechanism for moving value while the institution ultimately settles in the currency it needs.

“A corporate, fund or qualified investor holding a stablecoin position may need to convert it into dirham at size, at a firm price and through a regulated counterparty,” Kanoo explained.

The reverse flow is equally important. A UAE business holding AED may need stablecoins to settle with an international supplier, manage treasury operations or participate in a digital-asset transaction.

ARP Digital says this AED-to-stablecoin demand is greater than is often assumed and that it already services some of the region's largest corporates and institutions.

The company's ambition is therefore not simply to facilitate crypto-to-fiat conversions. It wants to become a major liquidity source for AED-to-stablecoin transactions as institutional adoption develops.

The Next Phase May Be Dirham-Denominated Stablecoins

For now, the practical institutional flow remains largely anchored to USD-referenced stablecoins. Nonetheless, Kanoo expects that to evolve as local-currency liquidity develops.

Dirham-referenced stablecoins could eventually become a more important component of the UAE's digital-asset market, reducing the need for institutions to move through a USD-referenced instrument when their underlying economic activity is denominated in AED.

For ARP Digital, this represents an infrastructure opportunity rather than simply a product opportunity. And as liquidity develops, the firm expects to be positioned between institutions holding local currency and those seeking digital forms of settlement.

The broader proposition is that the stablecoin becomes the transport mechanism, while the regulated financial system remains the destination.

That distinction is increasingly relevant for institutions that want the speed and efficiency of digital assets without abandoning established compliance and banking processes.

That regulated layer also extends to compliance. Kanoo said every transfer is subject to Travel Rule verification and on-chain wallet screening before funds move, providing institutions with a supervised conversion process and a complete audit trail.

Building the Regulated Layer Behind Other Financial Firms

ARP Digital's strategy also extends beyond serving companies directly.

The firm is seeing demand from regulated regional brokers, financial institutions, payment businesses and other firms that want to offer digital-asset functionality to their own customers without obtaining their own digital-asset licence or building the underlying infrastructure themselves.

Therefore, ARP Digital is developing a regulated conversion layer that can sit behind those businesses.

The capability is still being built and is not yet fully deployed, but it points towards a potentially broader role for the company within the region's financial infrastructure.

The model points toward a broader role for specialised regulated providers in providing the conversion, liquidity and compliance infrastructure that financial institutions need to work with digital assets.

Bahrain and Dubai create a broader Gulf footprint

The Dubai licence also changes what ARP Digital can do geographically.

The company already operates under a Category 3 Capital Markets Crypto Assets Service Provider licence from the Central Bank of Bahrain, under which it says it has processed more than $3.5 billion in volume for over 450 institutional and corporate counterparties.

The UAE licence gives the firm direct access to AED settlement through its Dubai entity, local UAE banking infrastructure, and its own banking rails. UAE clients can also fund through named virtual IBANs, supporting pay-in and pay-out flows connected to broker-dealer activity.

The UAE operation also supports named virtual IBANs, or VIBANs, which enable pay-in and pay-out flows linked to broker-dealer activity.

Together, Bahrain and Dubai give ARP Digital a broader regulated footprint across the Gulf.

With Bahrain and Dubai, the company now operates across two supervised Gulf markets, while its stated priority is to deepen its presence in the UAE before expanding further across the region.

From Crypto Access to Digital Capital Infrastructure

Moreover, the evolution of ARP Digital's business reflects a broader shift taking place across the Gulf.

The institutional digital-asset conversation is moving away from simply asking whether companies should own or trade crypto. Increasingly, the question is how digital assets can be incorporated into existing financial operations: payments, treasury, settlement, liquidity management and access to capital markets.

That requires infrastructure that financial institutions can integrate without having to become digital-asset specialists themselves.

For ARP Digital, the VARA licence represents more than an additional market. It establishes a local financial rail for digital capital.

The company says its longer-term ambition is to become a regulated, stablecoin-native platform that businesses can use across a range of institutional applications, allowing them to interact with stablecoins without having to manage the underlying complexity themselves.

The company is also seeing growing demand from capital markets participants, family offices and qualified investors seeking an institutionally governed route from digital assets into local markets.

To sum up, the direction ARP Digital is betting on is clear: digital assets may not replace traditional finance, but the institutions using them will increasingly need regulated bridges between the two.