Tracker and domain-review methodology

Purpose and scope

The UAE VASP Licence Tracker helps users find reviewed public records connected with virtual-asset activity in five UAE regulatory regimes. VASP Verify adds a reviewed website-domain layer so a user can move from a site to the relevant tracker record and primary source.

The publication is research infrastructure, not a complete register of every business that may lawfully offer a virtual-asset-related product in or from the UAE. It does not determine the legal effect of exemptions, cross-border permissions, group arrangements or facts outside the reviewed sources.

Regulators and registers covered

• Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA).
• Abu Dhabi Global Market Financial Services Regulatory Authority (ADGM / FSRA).
• Dubai International Financial Centre Dubai Financial Services Authority (DIFC / DFSA).
• Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE) reviewed payment-token and stored-value records.
• Capital Market Authority (CMA), with the stable tracker code SCA retained from its former name.

See data sources for register-level inclusion rules and direct official links.

Collection and publication workflow

1. 1
   Collect source records

   Purpose-built collectors retrieve the reviewed register pages, firm details, structured endpoints or official PDFs. The method varies because each regulator publishes differently.

2. 2
   Preserve source meaning

   Ape Law retains the source entity name, reference, status wording, permission lines and date representation where present. Missing source fields remain missing.

3. 3
   Normalise for comparison

   Stable identifiers, regulator codes, date precision and simplified activity labels make records comparable without replacing the original source wording.

4. 4
   Validate the candidate

   A candidate must contain a clean, non-zero result for all five configured sources and unique authorisation identifiers. Automated tests check shape, counts and data constraints.

5. 5
   Review and promote

   Collection does not publish automatically. A reviewed candidate is explicitly promoted as the current public bundle.

6. 6
   Review domain relationships

   Separate evidence links legal-entity, brand or group domains to tracker entities. Only reviewed relationships marked verified enter the extension index.

Entities, authorisations and permission lines

A legal entity is the regulator-named organisation. An authorisation is a regulator-scoped record assigned its own identifier. A permission line is a line of source activity or service wording associated with that authorisation. One entity can have several permission lines and, in some cases, more than one authorisation.

Entity identifiers are scoped to their regulator. The tracker does not claim that similarly named entities across jurisdictions are the same legal person. Related or duplicate-looking entries are retained when the official sources identify distinct legal entities, references or regimes.

Domain review

Domain candidates can come from regulator-listed websites and reviewed first-party pages. Ape Law looks for evidence connecting the domain to the named entity, brand, group or authorisation. The published relationship identifies its type, evidence URL, review date and whether reviewed subdomains may match.

A relationship can be legal_entity_website, official_brand_website or official_group_website. These categories describe the evidence relationship; none establishes that every page, product or group company is authorised. Unresolved entity reviews do not create a match.

The current review contains 114 verified relationships across 100 unique domains, including shared domains and entities with more than one reviewed domain.

Activity normalisation

Permission wording varies between regimes. Ape Law assigns one or more lower-case activity labels to help compare similar concepts. These labels are editorial normalisation, not regulator classifications. The original source permission lines remain separately visible and take priority.

For DFSA and some FSRA records, tracker inclusion relies on reviewed virtual-asset or Crypto Token scope in the underlying source. A public permission line can therefore be a source line selected for that scope; it must not be read without the regulator's full permission record and restrictions.

Status evidence and the active rule

A record is labelled Active, source stated only when the source provides explicit status evidence and the normalised value is active. Other explicit values such as authorised, approved or licensed retain a distinct source-stated label. An official announcement can support a separate approval description but is not silently converted into active. Register presence without an explicit current-status statement is treated as current status not expressly stated, although a raw register or category label such as Authorised Firms can still be displayed separately.

Dates and precision

Dates retain both a normalised value and their available precision: day, month, year or unknown. A year-only source remains year-only. Missing dates are displayed as not published by the source; Ape Law does not invent a day or use the collection date as a licence date.

Refresh and correction practice

Automated collection checks may run on a schedule, but publication is neither real-time nor guaranteed daily. Ape Law publishes only after a complete candidate has passed checks and review. The documentation displays the collection and domain-review dates for the current release.

Corrections are assessed against direct official records or reliable first-party evidence, then included in a reviewed publication or domain update. See updates and corrections.

Known limitations

• Source registers can be incomplete, delayed, changed or temporarily inaccessible.
• Coverage reflects configured inclusion rules, not every licence category or legal route relevant to virtual assets.
• Website ownership and group structures can change after review.
• A public website can present services from more than one entity.
• Permission lines do not reproduce every condition, restriction or instrument qualifier.
• Historical records are not presented as a complete time series.
• The tracker does not assess solvency, conduct, service quality, client eligibility or geographic restrictions.

Always open the current official record and obtain appropriate professional advice for consequential decisions.