Samir Safar-Aly’s Post

A few weeks ago, the Arab Monetary Fund’s Payment and Settlement Systems Committee meeting brought together leading central banks and financial authorities from across the Arab world to reflect on how payments infrastructure is adapting to the demands of the digital economy. I had the opportunity to represent PwC Middle East Legal on stablecoin regulation, drawing on international guidance and thematic studies issued by the Bank for International Settlements – BIS,International Organization of Securities Commissions - IOSCO, the Financial Stability Board (FSB), and the International Monetary Fund, highlighting how questions around classification, reserve adequacy, redemption rights, settlement finality, and cross-border legal recognition have become central to policymaking, particularly as CBDCs, tokenised deposits, and private stablecoins begin to coexist. There has been significant regional progress in this space from the 🇦🇪 Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates (CBUAE)’s Payment Token Services Regulations, alongside frameworks and developments from the 🇧🇭 Central Bank of Bahrain, the 🇦🇪 ADGM’s Financial Services Regulatory Authority, the 🇦🇪 Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA), and of course 🇦🇪 Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority [VARA], the recent Virtual Assets Law from the 🇯🇴 Central Bank of Jordan (CBJ) & Jordan Securities Commission, policy standings from the 🇶🇦 Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) Authority, and a recent draft law from 🇲🇦 Bank Al-Maghrib (Morocco). 🌍 We also had a chance to compare international approaches, such as the recent 🇺🇸 U.S. GENIUS Act (which, in my view, raises more questions that Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, US Treasury (FinCEN) will need to clarify), 🇪🇺MiCA, and others 🇸🇬🇭🇰🇬🇧🇨🇭🇯🇵🇧🇸 🇦🇺. Across the leading regimes, the centre of gravity is the same: backed by high-quality segregated reserves, redeemable at par for cash. The design choices then diverge in the details: hard-limit reserves vs cash and short sovereign paper while others allow broader HQLA; redemption from T+1 to five business days to “prompt on demand”; banks-only issuers vs domestically incorporated PSPs, or virtual-asset issuers; and supervisory homes vary between central-bank payment law, capital-markets law, and virtual-asset rulebooks. The UAE’s stack exemplifies this balance of shared prudential outcomes with different institutional pathways, while other examples each land on their own blend of reserve composition, redemption timelines, issuer perimeter, and cross-border operability. The discussions also went beyond digital currencies including 🧠 AI and machine learning in fraud detection and supervisory analytics. Grateful to the AMF (Dr. Nouran Youssef) and all participating central banks for fostering such a constructive and forward-looking forum. It’s evident that digital currencies and intelligent infrastructure are moving from pilots to policy, and soon to systemic architecture.