Kraken wins VARA approval to operate in Dubai

Payward, the parent company of Kraken, received preliminary broker-dealer and investment-management authorization from Dubai’s Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority on Thursday. The clearance allows Kraken to provide spot and margin trading, over-the-counter services, staking, crypto transfers and dirham funding to retail and professional clients in the United Arab Emirates through a locally regulated unit, Payward FZCO.

UAE customers will be able to fund accounts and withdraw in dirhams and connect to Kraken’s global order books across Europe, the United States and the Asia-Pacific. Institutional clients will have access to Kraken Prime. Payward said it intends to expand services in Dubai to include derivatives, lending and new investment products for qualified clients.

VARA, established in 2022, issues licenses for trading, custody and advisory services and has authorized several major crypto firms. The regulator has also taken enforcement action when firms operated without permission, ordering an exchange to stop serving Dubai residents in March.

Arjun Sethi, co-CEO of Payward and Kraken, praised Dubai’s regulatory clarity in a statement: “Dubai wrote a rulebook for crypto before most jurisdictions even acknowledged the asset class. That clarity is why real liquidity and institutional capital now sit in the UAE. Operating under VARA puts Kraken inside that perimeter, serving clients through a local, supervised entity rather than from offshore.” He added: “Clients in the UAE get the same order book, the same balance sheet, and the same multi-asset coverage we run in every other market. The difference is that the rulebook is written down and the supervisor is local.”

The VARA authorization follows Payward’s recent regulatory filings in the U.S. The company applied for a national trust company charter with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to provide federally regulated custody for institutional clients. Payward also filed for a U.S. initial public offering last November after raising $800 million at a reported $20 billion valuation.

Kraken’s local authorization places the exchange among firms operating under VARA oversight and enables onshore fiat rails and supervised access to Kraken’s global trading infrastructure for users in the UAE.