ARP Digital Secures VARA Broker-Dealer Licence, Adds Dubai to Its Regulated GCC Footprint

Dubai, UAE - ARP Digital, a regulated digital capital infrastructure platform, today announced that it has secured a Broker-Dealer licence from Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA). The licence enables ARP Digital to provide regulated digital asset conversion to local fiat currency. This milestone extends the firm's footprint from Bahrain into the UAE, the largest digital asset market in the Gulf, which received more than $56 billion in digital asset value across 2024 and 2025.

Under the licence, ARP Digital will offer UAE-domiciled corporates, capital markets participants and qualified investors regulated digital assets and stablecoins conversion to dirham. The firm will serve as the regulated gateway for deploying digital asset wealth into local assets, supporting greater institutional participation in the UAE market.

Securing this licence is a defining milestone for our business and reinforces our commitment to a compliance-first approach, said Abdulaziz Kanoo, Co-Founder of ARP Digital. “The UAE has rapidly established itself as one of the region's most important digital asset markets, driven by clear regulation and growing institutional demand. With this approval, we are well positioned to provide institutions with a regulated, secure gateway to access digital assets and participate in the next phase of the region's digital economy.

This regulated access addresses a longstanding gap in the UAE market. The country is home to a significant concentration of digital asset wealth held by both individuals and institutions, yet until recently lacked the compliant infrastructure needed to deploy that digital capital into the local assets. ARP Digital aims to address this gap by offering institutions the governance, compliance standards, and transparency required to participate with confidence.

“The appetite from corporates has always been there, particularly in markets like the UAE, said Abdulla Kanoo, Co-Founder of ARP Digital. Until now, however, the regulated infrastructure needed to deploy digital asset capital at scale simply didn't exist. As digital assets become an increasingly important component of global capital markets, we are building the infrastructure that allows financial institutions to integrate them into their operations.

ARP Digital holds a Category 3 Capital Markets Crypto Assets Service Provider licence from the Central Bank of Bahrain, under which it has processed over $3.5 billion in volume for more than 450 institutional and corporate counterparties, with 4x year-on-year growth in 2025. The

VARA licence makes UAE its second regulated market and brings the firm under two supervised Gulf frameworks. ARP Digital builds its regulated infrastructure in the Gulf to servethe Gulf and plans to extend that coverage as demand for regulated digital capital in the region grows.

About ARP Digital

ARP Digital is a regulated digital capital infrastructure platform headquartered in Bahrain. The firm operates an integrated suite of institutional services, including an OTC liquidity desk, international corridor settlement rails, on- and off-ramp conversion infrastructure, and regulated wealth management services. ARP Digital Bahrain is licensed as a Category 3 Capital Markets – Crypto Assets Service Provider by the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB), and ARP Digital FZCO has secured a Broker-Dealer licence from Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA). The firm was founded by Abdulla Kanoo, CEO (ARP Digital Bahrain), and Abdulaziz Kanoo, CEO (ARP Digital FZCO) – fifth-generation members of the GCC's 135-year-old Kanoo Group. ARP Digital serves institutional investors, exchange houses, global payment companies, and high-net-worth individuals across the Gulf Cooperation Council and international markets. To learn more about ARP Digital, visit: https://arpdigital.io/