The United Arab Emirates is transitioning from a digital payments leader to one of the most advanced Open Finance ecosystems. What was once a forward-looking regulatory vision is now entering execution—driven by strong regulatory mandates, national infrastructure, and increasing private sector participation.
With digital payments in the UAE projected to exceed 90% of total transactions by 2026 and fintech investment continuing to grow across the region, Open Finance is becoming the key aspect of financial services innovation.
The country is taking a centralized, regulator-led approach—accelerating adoption while maintaining consistency, security, and trust.
Regulatory Backbone: A Top-Down Approach to Ecosystem Building
The core of this transformation is the Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE), which has taken an active role in designing and enforcing the Open Finance framework since 2023.
Rather than leaving adoption optional, the CBUAE is mandating participation from financial institutions. This to ensure that banks, fintechs, and payment providers operate within a unified system. This reduces fragmentation—a key challenge seen in other markets—and enables faster ecosystem scaling.
Complementing this effort are regulatory hubs such as the Dubai Financial Services Authority and Abu Dhabi Global Market, both of which continue to foster innovation through sandbox programs, fintech licensing, and policy support.
AlTareq: The Infrastructure Powering Open Finance
A defining feature of the UAE’s strategy is AlTareq, its national Open Finance scheme. AlTareq standardizes how payment initiation works across the ecosystem, which covers: API specifications and interoperability standards, security and authentication protocols, as well as consumer protection frameworks.
By creating a single, regulated layer for payment initiation, the UAE eliminates the need for fragmented bilateral integrations between banks and fintechs. In markets without such infrastructure, fintechs often face long integration cycles and inconsistent standards. In contrast, AlTareq enables:
- Faster product launches
- Lower integration costs
- Scalable cross-institution use cases
Beyond Open Banking: The Rise of Service Initiation
What distinguishes the UAE’s open finance framework from other typical open banking frameworks is its introduction of something called ‘service initiation’. To advance beyond traditional banking, the country allows third parties to initiate a broader range of financial services directly within their platforms. This paves the way for embedded finance, where end-users can access services like digital lending, wealth management or pension setup seamlessly from a fintech app.
The Market Momentum: Spare’s Debut
Recently, a leading Open Finance fintech infrastructure company operating in the GCC region, Spare has received In-Principle Approval (IPA) from the CBUAE. This signals growing participation from global fintech players. Its solution leverages the AlTareq scheme for payment initiation within the Open Finance framework.
The pilot transaction, settled with UAE banks, is the first live international payment initiated under the Central Bank of the UAE’s Open Finance Regulatory Framework.
The timing is notable. Cross-border payments across the Middle East and Africa are projected to reach $31 billion by 2030, yet businesses in the region continue to face some of the highest transaction costs globally. As Open Finance initiatives mature, there is a clearer path toward addressing these inefficiencies through more standardized and interoperable infrastructure.
This milestone is less about a single company and more about what it represents for the market. With this new Open Finance in the UAE is beginning to move beyond data access and into transactional use cases—where commercial value is more clearly defined and scalable.
Open Finance Use Cases in the UAE
Some of the emerging banking and financial use cases in the UAE include:
- Personal Financial Management (PFM): Allows users to categorize transactions and add accounts from multiple institutions into a single view. With PFM, FIs can understand their customers’ history, their trends, risks and opportunities for them.
- Pay Request: Allows licensed third parties to initiate payment requests directly through a customer’s bank. This supports smoother and more secure payment experiences for use cases such as bill payments, e-commerce transactions, and recurring collections within the UAE’s regulated Open Finance framework.
- Business Financial Management (BFM): Helps businesses manage their financial flow by improving cash flow visibility, automate reconciliation processes, and managing financial activities more efficiently through aggregated financial data.
- Data & Service Initiation: Supports the shift toward real-time financial services by enabling faster payment execution, liquidity management, and cash position monitoring. This improves operational efficiency, particularly for businesses handling high transaction volumes and bulk payments.
Brankas x UAE
As the UAE continues to implement forward-thinking regulations and institutional frameworks such as Nebras and the Al Tareq API Hub, it solidifies its position as a global leader in fintech. Brankas is well-positioned to support large financial institutions (LFIs) in meeting these requirements efficiently and securely.
Brankas is able to simplify the integration lifecycle and enable LFIs to focus on delivering user-centric services. Brankas can help LFIs:
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Accelerate production readiness
Deploy pre-configured Open Finance APIs aligned with Central Bank of the UAE standards and the AlTareq framework—reducing integration timelines and ensuring seamless progression from sandbox to live environments.
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Enable secure, standardized connectivity
Integrate efficiently with the AlTareq ecosystem through robust MTLS-based infrastructure, with support across pre-production and production onboarding—ensuring reliability, scalability, and compliance from day one.
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Deliver end-to-end consent and authentication flows
Implement fully compliant authorization journeys, including Strong Customer Authentication (SCA), consent management, and user experience flows aligned with UAE regulatory expectations.
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Unlock real-world Open Finance use cases
Go beyond connectivity to enable payment initiation, embedded finance, and future service initiation capabilities—allowing LFIs to create new revenue streams and customer experiences.
Try Brankas for free today and experience the power of a market-leading, fully compliant open finance platform developed for developers, by developers.
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