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Kraken gets a Dubai licence. What that means for Pakistanis on both ends of the UAE corridor

Dubai's regulator has licensed Kraken's parent to serve retail clients, and Kraken says it will launch within weeks. Pakistani workers in the UAE sent home $748.5 million in September. On the Pakistani side of that corridor, no crypto platform is licensed.

Ammar Khan

Ammar Khan

4 min read
The Dubai skyline in haze across the water, with a gull in flight and a small boat in the foreground.
Photo by Ziad Al Halabi on Unsplash

Key takeaways

  • Payward, Kraken's parent, received licence VL/26/10/002 from Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) on 6 October. It announced "Full Market Approval" on 12 October.
  • Kraken says UAE clients will be able to trade in dirhams, with spot and margin, from "the coming weeks". Derivatives need further approval.
  • VARA's public register listed 58 licensed firms when we checked on 13 October. Binance has held a Dubai licence since April 2024. In Pakistan it holds only a no-objection certificate.
  • Pakistan has no licensed crypto platform and no public register yet. A Dubai licence covers the Dubai end of a transfer, not the Pakistani one.

What Dubai approved

In a statement on 12 October, Payward said VARA's approval "permits Payward to operate as a regulated Virtual Asset Service Provider, serving retail, professional and institutional investors". It said Kraken is targeting a launch for UAE clients "in the coming weeks".

At launch, according to Payward, UAE clients will get spot and margin trading in dirham pairs, dirham deposits and withdrawals, staking and tokenised stocks. Crypto derivatives and further yield products are expected "later in 2026 and into 2027, subject to regulatory approval". The full approval follows a preliminary one in May.

VARA's public register shows the licence itself. Payward FZCO holds licence VL/26/10/002, issued on 6 October 2026, for broker-dealer services and management and investment services.

The register Pakistan doesn't have yet

Dubai's register is a single public page. For each firm it gives a licence number, the activities licensed, the issue date and whether the licence is active. When we checked on 13 October, it listed 58 firms, all with full licences. It also says that firms holding only an in-principle approval may not serve clients.

Two names on it matter to Pakistani readers:

  • Binance FZE has held licence VL/24/04/001 since 15 April 2024. It covers exchange services, including derivatives trading, as well as broking, lending and investment services. In Pakistan, Binance holds a no-objection certificate from December 2025, which PVARA's rules say is not a licence. Its licence application is due by about 21 November, as our licence tracker sets out.
  • OKX Middle East has held licence VL/23/12/003 since September 2024.

Kraken is not on our tracker. PVARA's chairman said on 12 October that the regulator has received 75 applications, but PVARA has not said who filed them, so we cannot say whether Kraken is one.

Pakistan's licensing rules, notified on 21 August, provide for a public register of licensees. There are no licensees yet, so there is nothing to list.

Can Pakistanis use Kraken?

Kraken decides by where you live. Its support page on where it is licensed, last updated on 30 September, says that "depending on your verified residency, you may have certain restrictions on your account". Its list of prohibited regions does not include Pakistan or the UAE.

That means two different things for two groups of readers:

  • A Pakistani living in the UAE who verifies a UAE address would, once Kraken launches there, be a client of a VARA-licensed firm, and Dubai's rules would apply to that account.
  • A Pakistani living in Pakistan who uses Kraken is a client of a firm with no Pakistani licence. No Pakistani regulator supervises that account.

The corridor

In September, Pakistani workers in the UAE sent home $748.5 million, according to the State Bank's release of 9 October. Of the four main corridors it named, only Saudi Arabia sent more.

Most of that goes through banks and exchange companies. Some families also move money through stablecoins: buying USDT in the Gulf and selling it for rupees on peer-to-peer markets at home. A licensed Dubai platform makes the first half of that route regulated. The second half is not. P2P buyers and sellers in Pakistan are not licensed by PVARA. The State Bank's April circular lets banks open settlement accounts only for PVARA-licensed firms, and there are none yet.

On P2P markets, USDT has cost more than the official dollar every day in our daily series. On 12 October the premium was 2.47%.

What this means for Pakistani users

  • Check the register, not the advert. In Dubai, any firm claiming a VARA licence can be checked on VARA's register in seconds. Do that before you sign up.
  • Your residency decides your protection. The same app can be regulated for a UAE resident and unregulated for a Pakistan resident.
  • A licence at one end is not a licence at both. If you send money home through crypto, the Pakistani leg has no regulator yet, and banks here cannot yet serve crypto firms.
  • Margin is margin. Kraken's UAE launch includes margin trading. Borrowing to trade can wipe out a deposit quickly. This is not a recommendation to use Kraken or any platform.

CryptoPakistan has no affiliate or referral relationship with Kraken, Binance, OKX or any exchange named here.

What we're watching

  • Kraken's UAE go-live date, and whether its support page adds the UAE to its licences.
  • Whether Kraken applies to PVARA, and whether PVARA publishes who has applied.
  • The first entry on Pakistan's register of licensees.

Sources

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