DUBAI — Crypto exchange OKX has gone live in the UAE offering a dirham (AED)-denominated order book and integration with a local bank as it looks to attract retail clients and entice institutions that may have been reluctant to participate in the crypto market.

The opening, nine months after OKX Middle East Fintech FZE was granted full regulatory approval by the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), will allow one of the four biggest cryptocurrency exchanges by volume to offer local residents access to a market without involving a broker who buys liquidity from outside the UAE, usually at a higher price, adding time and friction, said Rifad Mahasneh, the exchange's general manager for the Middle East.

"We have two targets – to be the retail app of choice and market and to start converting institutions in the UAE to enter the space," Mahasneh said in an interview. "The return on investment is going to come from our ability to convert traditional institutions."

The combination of giving access to a regulated derivatives product, local-currency product and local banking channel could give entities representing global institutions, which have so far been sitting on the sidelines, comfort to trade, Mahasneh said. The company's banking partner is Zand Bank, which calls itself the UAE's first fully licensed, all-digital bank.

OKX is the first major exchange to go live with the combination of "an AED banking integration and an AED order book," retail and institutional availability, and the first to offer regulated derivatives in the market, Mahasneh said. It will offer 280 tokens and 400 trading pairs in the region.

Binance and Crypto.com are the other major international exchanges with full licenses from VARA. After announcing a partnership with Standard Chartered in August, Crypto.com's retail app is now available in the UAE, the company told CoinDesk in an email. Binance did not respond to a CoinDesk request for comment about whether it had gone live in the UAE.

VARA's public register shows OKX's license was issued Sept. 17.

"While that's VARA reflecting it's confident of you as a firm to operate in this space, the license comes with certain conditions that you need to complete before you go live," Mahasneh said. "We wanted to test the product too. The entire process took 24 months from start to finish."

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