Circle secures Abu Dhabi license as UAE doubles down on stablecoins and digital assets
Circle, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, has obtained a key regulatory license in Abu Dhabi, reinforcing the United Arab Emirates’ ambition to become a leading global hub for digital assets and blockchain-based finance.
The company has been granted a Financial Services Permission (FSP) from the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), the capital’s international financial center. The authorization allows Circle to operate as a licensed Money Services Provider within the jurisdiction, giving it formal approval to offer its stablecoin and related financial services to institutions and businesses in the region.
Alongside the license, Circle has appointed Saeeda Jaffar as managing director for Circle Middle East and Africa. She will be responsible for driving the firm’s strategy across the region, building partnerships and expanding the use of USDC in cross-border payments, trade finance, and digital commerce. Jaffar also holds a senior leadership role at Visa in the Gulf, bringing deep experience in traditional payments and financial infrastructure to Circle’s regional expansion.
Co-founder, chairman and CEO Jeremy Allaire underscored that ADGM’s regulatory framework is designed with high standards for disclosure, risk controls and customer protection. According to him, such requirements are essential if stablecoins are to be trusted as a core layer for payments and financial markets at scale, rather than remaining a niche instrument used only within the crypto ecosystem.
The approval comes amid a broader wave of licensing decisions in Abu Dhabi that point to an aggressive but structured embrace of digital assets. In recent months, several major crypto and stablecoin players have received regulatory sign-off to operate from the ADGM financial center. Tether’s USDT, the world’s largest stablecoin by circulation and a direct competitor to USDC, recently hit its own regulatory milestone there. Ripple has likewise secured approval for its dollar-pegged stablecoin, Ripple USD, marking another high-profile entrant into the emirate’s supervised digital asset ecosystem.
On the exchange side, one of the world’s biggest trading platforms, Binance, was recently granted three separate approvals in Abu Dhabi, covering exchange operations, clearing services and broker-dealer activities. This move followed regulatory clearance in the UAE for another large exchange, Bybit, earlier in the year. The pattern is clear: Abu Dhabi is systematically building a cluster of major digital asset firms under a unified regulatory umbrella, hoping to turn consistency and clarity of rules into a competitive advantage.
The UAE’s regulatory strategy, however, is not limited to centralized platforms and fiat-backed stablecoins. The country’s central bank and financial policymakers have intensified their work on rules for decentralized finance (DeFi), Web3 infrastructure and tokenized services. A new federal decree law, entering into effect in 2025, explicitly brings DeFi platforms and related service providers into the regulatory perimeter when they facilitate payments, exchanges, lending, custody or investment products. Those activities will require licensing, along with standards for compliance, governance and consumer safeguards.
Under this regime, projects can no longer argue that they fall outside financial regulation simply because they are built as open-source software or operate without a traditional corporate structure. The message from policymakers is that if a platform performs regulated financial functions, it will be treated accordingly, regardless of whether it calls itself “just code.”
Over the course of 2024, the UAE has steadily consolidated its position as a leading jurisdiction for digital asset regulation. In October of that year, the authorities exempted cryptocurrency transfers and conversions from value-added tax, signaling an intention to reduce friction for both retail and institutional users of digital assets. At nearly the same time, Dubai’s dedicated digital asset regulator introduced tighter requirements for crypto advertising and marketing, aiming to curb misleading promotions while still allowing genuine innovation to flourish.
The Ras Al Khaimah Digital Assets Oasis, a specialized free zone focused on Web3, has also been developing a legal framework tailored to decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and digitally native businesses. The goal is to offer legal clarity for structures that do not fit neatly into traditional corporate models but play a growing role in the tokenized economy.
Crucially, local regulators have not limited themselves to writing rules on paper. Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority has actively enforced its framework, sanctioning several unlicensed crypto operators and issuing fines and cease-and-desist orders. This combination of incentives for compliant players and visible penalties for rule-breakers is intended to build trust among global institutions that might otherwise be wary of entering the digital asset space.
For Circle, the Abu Dhabi license is more than a symbolic win. It opens the door to deeper integration of USDC into the financial plumbing of the Middle East and North Africa. With clear regulatory backing, USDC can be used more confidently by banks, fintech firms, remittance companies and corporates looking to streamline cross-border transactions. In a region where trade flows, expatriate remittances and dollar-linked contracts are central to the economy, a regulated dollar stablecoin can significantly cut settlement times and reduce reliance on legacy correspondent banking networks.
The move also positions Circle to participate in emerging experiments around tokenized deposits, wholesale central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and digital securities. As global banks and financial institutions test blockchain-based infrastructure for issuing and transferring tokenized claims on cash and assets, jurisdictions like the UAE that offer both regulatory clarity and operational licenses may become testbeds for new financial products.
From the UAE’s perspective, attracting organizations like Circle is part of a deliberate strategy to diversify the economy beyond hydrocarbons and strengthen its role as a financial and technology hub linking Asia, Europe and Africa. By formalizing licensing paths for everything from exchanges and stablecoins to DeFi infrastructure, the country is trying to balance innovation with accountability, hoping to avoid the boom-and-bust cycles and regulatory backlash that have marked earlier phases of the crypto industry.
At the same time, the growing regulatory competition in stablecoins is reshaping the global landscape. Multiple large issuers — including Circle, Tether and Ripple — are racing to align with top-tier regulatory regimes in both traditional financial centers and emerging hubs. Licenses such as the one granted in Abu Dhabi are increasingly seen as strategic assets: they can influence which stablecoins institutional players choose to integrate into payment flows, treasuries, embedded finance apps and tokenized markets.
For businesses operating in or with the UAE, Circle’s new status may accelerate the mainstreaming of stablecoin-based solutions. Corporate treasurers could use USDC for just-in-time liquidity in trade finance; fintechs might integrate it for remittances or on/off-ramping; Web3 startups could build services around a stable, regulated unit of account instead of volatile cryptocurrencies. Combined with the VAT relief on crypto conversions and the rapid development of local Web3 zones, this creates a dense ecosystem where both traditional and digital-native firms can experiment.
Looking ahead, much will depend on how smoothly Circle and other licensed entities navigate practical implementation: onboarding local partners, integrating with banking rails, establishing compliance standards and educating institutional clients about operational and regulatory risks. The UAE is moving quickly, but long-term success will hinge on consistent enforcement, effective supervision and the ability to adapt rules as technology evolves.
Nonetheless, the direction of travel is clear. By giving Circle the green light while simultaneously tightening oversight of DeFi and clamping down on unlicensed operators, Abu Dhabi and the wider UAE are signaling that the era of unregulated crypto experimentation is fading. In its place, they are trying to build a regulated digital asset economy where stablecoins, exchanges and decentralized platforms operate under rules designed to protect users and support large-scale, real-world adoption.