The Capital Vault UAE licence marks Capital.com’s first move into actual spot crypto ownership for its clients, shifting its UAE offering beyond CFD-based price exposure to execution, custody, and settlement of real digital assets.
Capital Vault, a separately regulated affiliate of Capital.com, secured a virtual-asset licence from the UAE’s Capital Market Authority (CMA), authorising it to deal in virtual assets as an agent or as a matching principal, and to provide custody on behalf of clients. Once the service goes live, UAE clients will be able to buy and hold crypto directly through the Capital.com app, with Capital Vault handling the full execution and custody stack.
The segregation matters. Capital Vault operates under its own governance, custody, and risk arrangements, ring-fenced from Capital.com’s other business lines. According to Finance Magnates, Capital Vault is among the first entities licensed under the CMA’s new virtual-asset framework. The affiliate has established an office in Abu Dhabi and is building a dedicated local virtual-asset team.
What the Capital Vault UAE Licence Actually Covers
The CMA licence covers three core permissions: dealing as agent, dealing as matching principal, and providing custody. That is a meaningful subset of the eight regulated activities the CMA introduced when it expanded its virtual-asset framework in April 2026, up from three previously.
According to the UAE CMA’s official announcement, the full list of regulated virtual-asset activities now includes: Dealing in Virtual Assets as Principal, Dealing in Virtual Assets as Agent, Providing Custody, Arranging Custody, Arranging Investment Deals, Providing Investment Advice, Portfolio Management, and Operating a Multilateral Trading Facility.
The framework is built across five modules: General Requirements, Conduct of Business, Alternative Trading System, Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing, and Prudential Requirements.
A Regulatory Landscape That Keeps Moving
Formally designated as Chairman of the CMA Board of Directors’ Resolution No. (04/Chairman) of 2026 concerning the Regulation of Virtual Asset Service Providers and the Alternative Trading System Operator, the framework has already been extended. According to Dentons, a subsequent resolution in June 2026 permitted entities licensed by the Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE), other than insurance companies, to conduct activities falling within the CMA’s virtual-asset framework.
Meanwhile, Dubai’s own virtual-asset regulator, VARA, released Version 2.1 of its Exchange Services Rulebook, effective 31 March 2026. As reported by Clyde & Co, the updated rulebook permitted exchange-traded virtual asset derivatives (including futures, options, CFDs, and perpetuals) under a permanent regulatory regime in Dubai for the first time, subject to authorisation and oversight.
That context sits directly in Capital.com’s operating territory. Its existing UAE business runs on CFDs; the new Capital Vault structure layered on top means it now has a licensed pathway for both sides of the product spectrum in the region.
Capital.com has not disclosed a go-live date for the spot service. The pace of UAE licensing activity suggests the queue will only get longer: the regulatory infrastructure now supports eight distinct virtual-asset activities across two separate regulatory bodies, and the CBUAE-licensed entity pathway opened in June 2026 is likely to draw a new cohort of applicants into the CMA’s framework.
