Exclusive: How UAE Banks Can Evolve Crypto Services with Confidence

Emirates NBD’s recent launch of native crypto trading within its mobile app marks a pivotal moment for the UAE’s financial sector — and sends a clear signal for other banks, and virtual asset service providers (VASPs) to follow. As the UAE sharpens its focus on digital assets, this move underscores the need for institutions to shift from passive observation to active participation. To keep pace and unlock the full potential of tokenisation, stablecoins, and real-world asset integration, UAE-based players will be best served by progressing through a five-step crypto maturity model — designed to help them navigate risk, build trust, and ultimately lead in a regulated, innovation-driven future.

By Arushi Goel, Head of Policy for Middle East & Africa at Chainalysis

Step 1: Lay the Foundation – Strategy, Leadership, and Learning

Identify your stakeholders and appoint a leader who will champion crypto. This does not need to be a crypto expert. As a start, it must be someone who has the passion and commitment to bring together and inspire those who will work directly with crypto or crypto businesses. This could be the investment bankers, commercial bankers, traders, corporate lenders, and wealth managers. The crypto-champion will also assemble risk-management professionals such as Know Your Customer (KYC) experts and anti-fraud specialists.

The crypto team will compose a roadmap consistent with the business’s risk appetite. Having identified skills gaps — such as knowledge of blockchain-analytics or crypto-compliance tools — they can institute the appropriate training for stakeholders or make plans to engage with external experts. Training can be supplemented by consulting the many resources available across the crypto landscape.

Step 2: Engage the Ecosystem – Onboard Crypto-Aligned Customers

At this stage, financial institutions move beyond internal education and planning to actively engage with crypto businesses. With a defined risk appetite and compliance in mind, the institution can now start thinking about monetisation, and that means identifying customers. Retail banks will allow customers to transact with cryptocurrency businesses that align with the banks’ risk profile. The key enabler here is on-chain risk assessment, which will allow a financial institution to properly assess the risks associated with individual crypto businesses and grow its exposure to the sector in a safe and regulated way.

With the right technology, traditional banks can even take on cryptocurrency businesses as clients and allow retail customers to link their accounts to external cryptocurrency exchanges. This will reduce the friction between crypto and TradFi and make it easier for users to manage their crypto holdings alongside their traditional assets.

Step 3: Explore Opportunities – Offer Synthetic Crypto Exposure

At this point crypto banks will be comfortable moving in crypto spaces. This does not mean that at this step, a bank will accept cryptocurrency deposits, but it can go as far as offering synthetic crypto products. These would be largely cryptocurrency-based investments that allow customers to capture some crypto upsides without full exposure to the ecosystem. An example of this is last year’s emergence of Bitcoin ETPs.

Step 4: Dive In – Accept Crypto Deposits and Offer Custody

Banks will finally take the crypto plunge. They give customers direct access to cryptocurrency markets and accept deposits of crypto assets. We also saw global banks do this in 2024, and as retail and institutional demand grows in 2025, particularly in the UAE, more TradFi players are expected to follow suit. The country’s TradFi organisations can make this move by partnering with crypto-native startups in outsourcing ventures. The startup would shoulder the technical complexities of holding digital assets,

allowing the bank to offer full digital assets custody solutions to customers. The younger company would provide a reliable and secure path to market in a way that mitigates the risk of exposure for the bank.

Step 5: Innovate at the Edge – Embrace DeFi, Collateral, and Stablecoin Payments

At present, this highest level of maturity is sparsely populated. But there are some institutions around the world that have gone beyond accepting deposits and expanded their custody services to allow, say, institutional clients to use crypto assets as collateral in DeFi-based loans, such as Fidelity did last year with Bitcoin. And traditional operators can partner with DeFi-native companies to share in the exciting developments in that arena. We can also expect growing acceptance of crypto in the global payments industry.

A marathon, not a sprint

UAE TradFi institutions have a host of lucrative opportunities ahead of them in the crypto space. Their customers are calling for such offerings, so it is imperative that they respond, and soon.

The 5-step maturity journey takes the sting out of the transition and allows TradFi players to control risk and see the value of each step before taking the next one. With the right tools, banks can put blockchain-based transactional data in dialogue with their own records, observe the results, make the right decisions, and win the day.