Services · Mobile app development · Fintech apps
Codeeo takes on fintech app development in Dubai for payment companies, wallet providers, wealth and brokerage firms in the DIFC, virtual asset businesses and the startups preparing to apply for a licence. We build the customer app, the onboarding and compliance tooling, and the operations console, designed around the regulator your licence sits with. The work suits teams who already know their product and need engineers who understand why a CBUAE rulebook clause or a DFSA conduct rule changes how a screen behaves.
Codeeo is a technology partner, not a licensed financial institution. Your licence, your safeguarding arrangements and your compliance officer stay in place. We build software that makes those controls visible, testable and easy to evidence when the regulator or your auditor asks.
200+ companies servedFrom a first store to an ADX listed developer
What the app can include
Dubai is unusual because one city holds three regulatory worlds. Onshore payment and stored value businesses are licensed by the Central Bank of the UAE. Firms inside the Dubai International Financial Centre answer to the Dubai Financial Services Authority, a common law jurisdiction with its own rulebook. Virtual asset activity in Dubai outside the DIFC is licensed by VARA. Each regime shapes onboarding, disclosures, record keeping, outsourcing and incident reporting differently. As fintech app developers in Dubai we start every engagement by confirming which regime applies and what your licence allows, then choose the features below. A wallet provider and a DIFC wealth platform might share three modules and differ on the rest. We also plan for the CBUAE open finance framework, which is changing how account data and payments move between licensed firms.
Sign up flows that use UAE Pass for verified identity where your licence and integration approval allow it, plus Emirates ID scanning, liveness checks and document capture through an eKYC provider. Risk based rules decide when a customer needs enhanced due diligence, and every step is logged for the compliance file.
Faster account opening with evidence your compliance team can audit.
Wallet balances, top ups by card or bank transfer, peer to peer transfers, merchant payments and withdrawals, built on a double entry ledger. Limits, velocity checks and safeguarding reconciliations are designed to match your stored value facility licence conditions under the CBUAE regulation. Customers see pending, completed and reversed transactions clearly, in Arabic or English.
Balances that reconcile to the safeguarded account every day.
Payment links, QR payments, in app checkout, refunds and settlement reports for merchants, built for firms licensed under the CBUAE Retail Payment Services and Card Schemes Regulation. Apple Pay and Google Pay tokenisation sit alongside card processing through your acquirer or payment partner.
Merchants accept payments and see settlements in one place.
Account information and payment initiation flows designed around the CBUAE open finance framework, with consent screens that show exactly what data is shared and for how long. Customers can review and revoke consents in the app, and every request is logged. We track the framework's phased rollout so your integration plan follows its timetable.
Account data and payments flow with consent the customer understands.
Portfolio views, order placement, suitability questionnaires, client classification and disclosures for DFSA authorised firms. Statements, contract notes and research are delivered securely, and relationship managers see the same client view in their console. Arabic and English statements are generated from the same data.
Clients manage investments without emailing PDFs back and forth.
For VARA licensed firms, onboarding, risk disclosures, marketing approvals, transaction monitoring hooks and Travel Rule data capture built into the app. Custody and trading engines usually come from specialist providers, so we integrate them and build the customer and operations layers around them.
Customer screens that reflect what your VARA licence permits.
Screening against sanctions and watch lists at onboarding and on an ongoing basis, transaction monitoring rules, alert queues and case files for analysts. Evidence for suspicious transaction reports is assembled so your MLRO can file through goAML with the UAE Financial Intelligence Unit.
Alerts handled in one queue with a full audit trail.
Applications, affordability checks, credit bureau consent, e-signature of agreements, repayment schedules and reminders for licensed finance companies. Collections tools respect consumer protection standards and record every contact with the customer.
Loan decisions documented from application to final repayment.
Device binding, biometric login, certificate pinning, root and jailbreak detection, encrypted local storage and session controls. Backends include secrets management, audit logs and monitoring, and we support penetration testing by your chosen independent firm before each major release.
Controls you can show an assessor, not only describe.
A web console for support, operations, finance and compliance teams, with role based permissions and maker checker approval on sensitive actions such as limit changes, refunds and account closures. Reports cover reconciliation, complaints and regulatory returns data. Complaints are logged with timestamps so response times can be shown to the regulator.
Every sensitive change approved by a second person and logged.
Who this is for
Financial services app development in Dubai covers very different businesses, and the right partner for a DIFC wealth manager is not always the right one for a consumer wallet. We work best with teams who own their regulatory relationship and want an engineering partner who will read the rulebook alongside them. We are less suited to founders who want a white label wallet launched before they have a licence route or a partner bank, because the product would have to be rebuilt once those decisions are made. These are four common starting points.
You hold or are applying for a stored value facility or retail payment services licence and need the product built to match. We design the ledger, limits, onboarding and safeguarding reports first, then the consumer screens. Remittance, payroll cards and merchant wallets each bring their own flows, and we plan them with your compliance officer from the first workshop.
Licence conditions are read before features are scoped.
Asset managers, brokers, advisers and platforms in the DIFC need client classification, suitability checks and disclosures that match DFSA conduct rules, often for professional clients across the GCC. We build client portals and adviser tools that connect to your custodian or portfolio system and keep records your compliance team can retrieve quickly.
Exchanges, brokers and custodians licensed in Dubai need customer apps with clear risk warnings, marketing controls and Travel Rule data, connected to specialist trading and custody engines. We build the application layer and integrations, and we will not build features that sit outside the activities your VARA licence covers.
Regulators and partner banks want to see how your product will work before they approve it. We help founders build a demonstrable prototype, a technical architecture document and the policies that describe how controls work in software, so the application and the product match. For DIFC innovation testing or CBUAE sandbox routes, we scope the minimum product needed to test safely. Once the licence is granted, the same codebase grows into the production product rather than being thrown away.
We do not give legal or regulatory advice.
How we work together
A fixed scope first release fits firms with a clear licence category and defined product. A dedicated team suits companies running several products, such as a wallet plus a merchant app, where engineers need to stay close to the controls over time. A support retainer covers live apps, including CBUAE notices, DFSA or VARA rule changes, partner API updates and app store policy changes. Because we are in Dubai, discovery and control walkthroughs can happen in person with your compliance and risk teams. Cost depends on the number of integrations, the depth of compliance tooling, user roles, languages and the testing your partners require.
Every engagement has a named delivery lead, a backlog your product owner can read at any time and a demo at the end of each sprint. Compliance and risk staff are invited to those demos, because a control they see working early is far cheaper to adjust than one discovered during pre-launch testing.
A defined build with a deadline
We agree what the product has to do, write it down with a price and a date, and build exactly that. Changes are priced before they are made, not discovered on the invoice.
A product that keeps evolving
Named engineers who work your hours, join your standups and stay on the codebase. You direct the backlog; we own the quality of what ships.
Something live that needs looking after
A monthly block of hours for improvements, fixes and the small requests that otherwise wait months. Unused hours carry for a quarter.
Technology
Native Swift and Kotlin for apps that need deep device security, or a cross platform framework where it fits, with backends on UAE cloud regions when your licence or outsourcing rules require local hosting. Infrastructure is written as code so your auditors can see how every environment is built. Ledgers run on a relational database with strict transactional guarantees, never on a cache or a document store alone.
01Mobile
02Data and cloud
03Marketing and tracking
It depends more on licensing, partners and testing than on screens.
The build itself moves in sprints, but the timeline is often set by external steps: partner bank onboarding, card scheme or payment processor certification, UAE Pass integration approval, penetration testing and any notifications your regulator requires. During discovery we list those dependencies with you and plan the releases around them, then confirm dates in writing. A prototype for a licence application can come well before the production release.
Schedule a free consultation and get a written recommendation, with costs, before you commit to anything.
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