The Capital Vault UAE licence was issued on 20 August 2026, according to CryptoNews.net, giving Capital.com a separately regulated vehicle through which its UAE clients can buy and hold virtual assets outright, distinct from its existing contracts for difference (CFD) brokerage.
Capital Vault UAE secured a full federal virtual-asset licence from the UAE’s Capital Market Authority (CMA), the federal regulator. The licence authorises the entity to deal in virtual assets as an agent or matching principal and to provide custody on behalf of clients, meaning it can execute spot transactions and hold the purchased assets under client-asset rules.
What the Capital Vault UAE Licence Actually Covers
Once the service launches, UAE clients will access it through the existing Capital.com app. The legal and operational structure, however, changes depending on which product a client uses. CFD activity stays within Capital.com’s established brokerage, while spot virtual-asset execution, settlement and custody flow through Capital Vault UAE, which holds its governance, custody and risk arrangements separately.
Rahul Kumar, Chief Executive Officer of Capital Vault UAE, said: ‘The UAE is at the forefront of virtual-asset regulation in the region, and the Capital Market Authority’s review process for virtual-asset licensing reflects that rigour.’ The company has opened an Abu Dhabi office and is building a local virtual-assets team.
What remains unknown is considerable. Capital.com has not disclosed the supported tokens, a launch date, pricing, liquidity providers, key-storage arrangements, custody insurance, or whether users will be able to make external deposits and withdrawals, stake assets, or transfer between users. Whether the service will resemble a full crypto exchange or a more restricted broker-led buy-and-hold model is therefore still unclear.
A New UAE Rulebook That Raises the Bar
The licence was granted under a recently overhauled federal framework. The CMA replaced its previous virtual-asset rules entirely with Decision No. 4/R.M/2026. Dentons described the new regime as ‘not a tweak or an update, but a full reset,’ imposing additional compliance, investment capital, and technology governance obligations on all licence holders. Capital Vault UAE’s permissions sit within that tighter framework.
The UAE operates five separate, active virtual-asset licensing frameworks in parallel: the federal CMA regime, VARA in Dubai, ADGM/FSRA in Abu Dhabi’s financial free zone, DFSA/DIFC in the Dubai International Financial Centre, and CBUAE for payment token and stablecoin operators. More than 100 virtual asset entities hold active licences across those frameworks as of August 2026, according to the NeosLegal UAE VASP Licence Tracker.
Capital Vault UAE is among the first companies licensed under the CMA’s new framework, but it is not alone. The VARA public register confirms that XBase Virtual Assets Broker and Dealer Services LLC and CoinCorner Virtual Assets Broker and Dealer Services L.L.C. both hold active CMA registration numbers alongside their VARA licences, with XBase licensed from March 2026 and CoinCorner from May 2026. Bybit, which Yahoo Finance and CoinDesk reported was the first crypto exchange to obtain a full CMA licence from the SCA (the authority’s former name), holds permissions covering trading, brokerage, custody, and fiat conversion for both retail and institutional clients.
Following the EU Blueprint
The UAE structure mirrors what Capital.com established in Europe. Capital Vault Ltd, the Cyprus-based affiliate, received MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation) authorisation on 1 December 2025 from the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC). According to ChainScreen’s MiCA authorised CASPs list, that authorisation covers custody, crypto-to-fiat exchange, crypto-to-crypto exchange, and order execution.
The MiCA passport has since extended to a broad range of European markets. TheBanks.eu data shows the passport covers Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Iceland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, and Poland, among others. The UAE entity now replicates this model at the federal level in the Gulf.
For Capital.com clients in the UAE, the practical question is what the service will look like when it eventually opens. The CMA licence grants real regulatory standing and meaningful client-asset protections, but the product scope remains undefined. The launch date is the next disclosure to watch.
