VARA and MasterCard to develop stablecoin and payments infrastructure in Dubai
During the Dubai Future Finance week, VARA (Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority) and Mastercard signed an MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) aiming to foster a trusted innovative and sustainable virtual assets sector, as well as utilizing Mastercard’s experience to develop the infrastructure and capabilities needed to support the use of stablecoins and other digital forms of value in real-world payments.
This comes as MasterCard recently acquired stablecoin infrastructure leader BVNK.
Through the collaboration, both organizations will seek to strengthen industry engagement, facilitate knowledge sharing and explore opportunities to support emerging technologies and market participants. .The parties will also explore initiatives to support founders and emerging businesses in the virtual assets sector, including opportunities for experimentation through regulatory sandboxes.
Matthew White, Chief Executive Officer of VARA, noted that the ambition in Dubai is to participate in the future of finance, and that collaborations such as this builds an ecosystem where innovation can flourish amidst regulatory standards. He adds, “Our engagement with Mastercard reflects our commitment to fostering responsible innovation, strengthening market confidence and ensuring Dubai remains at the forefront of the evolving digital economy.”
Gina Petersen-Skyrme, Senior Vice President and Country Manager, UAE and Oman, at Mastercard, also explained that the potential of digital assets lies in their ability to create new ways for people and businesses to exchange value. Yet realizing that potential requires clear regulatory frameworks, trusted infrastructure and close collaboration across the ecosystem.
He states, “At Mastercard, we are bringing our global expertise in payments, security and digital assets to our work with VARA, exploring how emerging technologies can be applied responsibly and contribute to Dubai’s ambition to shape the future of finance.”
In September of 2026, VARA, and Securitize Corp, a global institutional tokenization platform, signed an MoU to support tokenization infrastructure in Dubai UAE. As per the announcement, both entities will collaborate through knowledge sharing, ecosystem development and regulatory engagement to advance responsible innovation in tokenization.
Notably as well Mastercard is expanding its stablecoin settlement for domestic and cross-border transactions to the UAE in alliance with Abu Dhabi based ADI Foundation, which uses blockchain infrastructure for governmental and enterprise solutions.
