Wio, Zand and Ruya: The UAE’s Digital Banks and Who They Suit

Ask which digital banks operate in the UAE and you will get a list that mixes two completely different
kinds of thing: institutions holding their own banking licence, and app-based brands running on somebody
else’s.

The distinction is not academic. It determines who regulates the product, whose balance sheet your
deposit sits on, and who you are actually a customer of. And it is settled definitively by a document
most people never open: the Central Bank of the UAE’s register of licensed banks.

What the register shows

The CBUAE publishes a register listing every licensed bank with its licence type, licence category,
head office and an identification number that embeds its licensing year. Here is what it says about the
UAE digital banks.

Three things follow immediately.

Wio and Zand hold full retail national bank licences — the same category as Emirates
NBD and Mashreq. They are not a junior class of institution operating under some lighter regime.

ruya holds a different licence entirely: Islamic Specialized, a narrower category, and
the only Islamic licence among the three.

Liv, Mashreq Neo and E20 do not appear in the register at all. Emirates NBD and
Mashreq do. That is the hard evidence for what is usually asserted loosely: Liv and E20 are brands
operating on Emirates NBD’s licence, and Mashreq Neo on Mashreq’s. They are products of conventional
banks, not banks.

One more correction the register forces. Nobody in this group can claim to be the UAE’s first digital
bank — Al Maryah Community Bank was licensed in 2021, ahead of all three, and the app-based brands
predate everything as products. Avoid the superlative; it is wrong whichever way you point it.

The licensing framework underneath

The CBUAE licenses banks as conventional or Islamic, and sub-categorises them into retail banking for
individuals and specialised banks. Its rulebook carries a dedicated regulation for Specialized Banks with
Low Risk, requiring anyone intending to operate one to obtain a licence first.

That two-axis taxonomy — conventional or Islamic, retail or specialised — is exactly what the register
columns record, and it is why “digital bank” is a description of a distribution model rather than a
licence category. None of these institutions holds a “digital bank licence”, because no such thing
exists.

Wio Bank

Wio is incorporated under the laws of Abu Dhabi, based at Etihad Airways Centre, and licensed and
regulated by the Central Bank.

Its shareholders, as announced at launch in February 2022: ADQ and Alpha Dhabi with a combined 65%
stake, Etisalat — now e& — with 25%, and First Abu Dhabi Bank with 10%, on total invested capital of AED
2.3 billion plus an in-kind contribution. We are dating that split rather than presenting it as current,
because it is the launch announcement and we found no primary confirmation of today’s register. The
primary release gives ADQ and Alpha Dhabi only as a combined figure, so any split between those two that
you see quoted is invented.

The shareholder list is the interesting part. This is a bank assembled by Abu Dhabi’s sovereign
investment arm, its largest listed holding company, the national telecoms operator and the largest
lender — see our profiles of ADQ
under L’IMAD for the anchor investor.

Wio serves both sides of the market: it offers Personal, Business and Family propositions plus a
separate Wio Invest brokerage.

Suits: individuals and SMEs wanting a full-service retail bank without branches, and
anyone who wants banking and brokerage from the same operator.

Zand Bank

Zand is licensed by the Central Bank and registered at Emaar Square in Dubai. It describes itself as
an “AI-powered bank for the digital economy”.

Its register category is retail — but its public positioning is emphatically not. The site foregrounds
corporate banking, a regulated AED-backed stablecoin on public blockchains, an investment-grade Fitch
rating of BBB+ with stable outlook, ISO 27001 and 27701 certification and a SOC 2 Type II attestation
covering Web3 services.

That gap between a retail licence and an institutional, digital-asset-facing proposition is the most
distinctive thing about Zand. It is a positioning choice rather than a regulatory one, but it tells you
who the bank is actually built for. Our guide to
Dubai’s crypto regulation under
VARA covers the regime that side of the business operates in, and our explainer on the
digital dirham covers
what the Central Bank is building in the same space.

Suits: corporates, institutional clients and businesses with digital-asset or
treasury requirements.

ruya

ruya — Ruya Community Islamic Bank — is headquartered in Ajman, not Sharjah as is
frequently reported, launched in 2024, and licensed by the Central Bank. It describes itself as a
digital-first Islamic bank combining “cutting-edge digital technology with the timeless principles of
Shariah-compliant banking”.

It runs distinct personal and business banking arms, so it serves both segments despite the narrower
licence category.

Its genuinely unusual feature is that it is not purely digital. ruya pairs the app with physical
Community Centres — a deliberate hedge against the branchless model — and runs a deposit-linked forest
programme called Nature Protect.

Suits: customers wanting Shariah-compliant banking with a digital front end, and
those who want somewhere physical to go.

How to choose

Two things this comparison deliberately omits. We are not quoting customer numbers, deposit totals,
market share or valuations for any of them, because none is published in a source we could verify. And we
are not ranking them, because the right answer depends entirely on whether you are an individual, an SME
or a corporate treasury.

What the register does establish is the more useful point for anyone opening an account: all three are
licensed banks supervised by the Central Bank, which is the supervisory and regulatory authority for the
banking sector. Whatever the app looks like, the institution behind it is regulated on the same terms as
the incumbents. Our guides to
opening a personal
bank account as an expat and to
opening a business
account cover the practical process, and our reporting on
the GCC digital banking
race and on
the Central
Bank’s view of the sector set out the wider market.

Primary sources: the Central Bank of the UAE’s
register
of licensed banks and its
rulebook
on specialized banks; the UAE Government portal on
banking
in the UAE; Wio Bank,
Zand Bank and
ruya; and the Abu
Dhabi Government Media Office on
Wio’s
launch and shareholding. This article is general information, not financial advice.