Ant International wins UAE payment and stored-value licences, opening the way for Antom merchant acquiring

Ant International announced on 15 October that the Central Bank of the UAE has granted it two licences: a Retail Payment Services and Card Schemes (Category II) licence and a Stored Value Facilities licence. The company describes them as a step towards offering merchant acquiring in the UAE through Antom, its merchant payments business. No launch date for local acquiring has been given. Antom says it supports more than 300 payment methods, reaches shoppers in over 200 markets and handles more than 140 currencies. Once it is live in the UAE, local merchants would be able to take payments from domestic and international customers, online and in store, through one provider. The stored-value licence is for WorldFirst, Ant's cross-border account business, which can now offer cross-border financial services in the country. The announcement separates this from Alipay+, which already lets UAE merchants accept payments from foreign digital wallets through licensed local banks and acquirers. That arrangement continues independently. The new licences would let Ant act as a licensed provider in its own right instead of relying on local partners. Ant International says it processes an average of 20 million transactions a day worldwide. For online merchants, the UAE is a high-value market with heavy tourist and expatriate spending, and wallet users from Asia make up a large share of it. A licensed acquirer with a large catalogue of payment methods adds competition to the existing local banks and international processors. It could also make it easier to offer Asian wallets alongside local cards without building separate integrations.