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Foloosi, a UAE-born payments technology company, has received In-Principle Approval (IPA) from the Central Bank of the UAE for a Category III licence under the Retail Payment Services and Card Schemes (RPSCS) Regulation, the company announced on 16 September 2026. The approval is a step toward a final licence, subject to Foloosi meeting the Central Bank’s remaining requirements and conditions.
Founded in 2018 by Omar Bin Brek and Mohan Karuppiah, Foloosi graduated from the Sheraa incubator that year and was incorporated as a DIFC company in September 2019 through FinTech Hive. The company has built its business around helping UAE merchants accept and manage digital payments, expanding from an online payment gateway into a broader platform covering payment links, invoicing, subscriptions, QR payments, Tap to Phone and point-of-sale.
Key Takeaways
Foloosi, a UAE payments company founded in 2018, has received In-Principle Approval from the Central Bank of the UAE for a Category III licence under the Retail Payment Services and Card Schemes (RPSCS) Regulation, a domestic-only licence covering payment account issuance and merchant acquiring.
The company says it has processed more than AED 7 billion in payment volume and served over 10,000 merchants across the UAE, a scale built on modest disclosed funding, a $500,000 seed round from two individual angel investors.
Foloosi is now positioning itself around AI-driven payment infrastructure, fraud detection, transaction routing and eventually agentic payment infrastructure, framed explicitly as a future roadmap rather than a live product.
What a Category III licence actually covers
A Category III RPSCS licence permits payment account issuance and merchant acquiring, but is domestic-only, it carries no cross-border payment scope, which sits under a different category. It requires AED 500,000 to AED 1 million in capital. That places Foloosi’s approval specifically around its core UAE merchant-acquiring business rather than any international expansion.
Omar Bin Brek, Foloosi’s co-founder and chief executive, said:
“Receiving In-Principle Approval from the Central Bank of the UAE is an important milestone for Foloosi and reflects the progress we have made in building a strong, secure and scalable payments business in the UAE. We started Foloosi with a simple ambition: to build payment technology in the UAE that could serve businesses of every size. Today, after processing more than AED 7 billion in payments and serving over 10,000 merchants, we are entering the next chapter of that journey.”
Scale built on modest disclosed funding
Foloosi says it has now processed more than AED 7 billion in payment volume and served more than 10,000 merchants across the UAE. That scale sits against a comparatively small disclosed funding history: a six-figure angel investment followed by a $500,000 seed round from two individual investors, Rashed Alfalasi and Mohammed Alsuwaidi, around 2019-2020. No larger institutional round has been publicly disclosed since.
An AI roadmap, not yet a live product
Alongside the licensing update, Foloosi laid out a longer-term vision for what it calls AI-native payment infrastructure: transaction intelligence, real-time fraud and risk detection, intelligent payment routing, merchant analytics, automated reconciliation, and eventually agentic payment infrastructure where authorised AI agents interact directly with payment systems. The company frames this explicitly as a direction it is building toward, not a feature already live, and gave no timeline for when any of these capabilities would ship.
FAQ
What licence has Foloosi received approval for?
In-Principle Approval from the Central Bank of the UAE for a Category III licence under the Retail Payment Services and Card Schemes Regulation, covering payment account issuance and merchant acquiring.
When was Foloosi founded and by whom?
2018, by Omar Bin Brek and Mohan Karuppiah, graduating from the Sheraa incubator that year.
How big is Foloosi’s business today?
The company says it has processed more than AED 7 billion in payments and served over 10,000 merchants across the UAE.
Is Foloosi’s In-Principle Approval a final licence?
No. It’s a step toward a final licence, subject to meeting the Central Bank’s remaining requirements and conditions.
Is Foloosi’s AI-native payment infrastructure live today?
No. The company describes it as a long-term roadmap, including transaction intelligence, fraud detection and eventually AI-agent-driven payments, without a disclosed launch timeline.
Editor’s Take: A Category III IPA, tightly scoped to domestic merchant acquiring, that matches exactly what Foloosi’s business already does. The press release’s own framing, From AED 7 Billion in Payments to AI-Native Infrastructure, leads with the AI vision instead, which is the more marketable story but not the more substantive one this week.