Sokin gets DFSA licence, to grow UAE team to 100 staff

Dubai: Global fintech firm Sokin has secured a Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) licence, and has opened a new UAE office at One Za’abeel. The company plans to grow its local team to 100 people and has formed a strategic partnership with Seed Group.

This allows the businesses clients to now scan and receive dirhams into a Sokin AED account. Platform partners gain embedded local payment rails to move money into and out of the UAE, and across more than 70 other currencies, for their clients.

The numbers behind the move are sizeable. Businesses move more than $11 billion a year through Sokin’s licenses and infrastructure, spanning 70 currencies across 170 countries. The company holds licences in 36 countries and runs eight offices. Founded in 2019, it has raised over $100 million from investors including Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital and Prysm Capital.

Vroon Modgill, Sokin’s founder and CEO, insists the UAE is no side project. “This is not a satellite office for us,” he says in an exclusive interview with Gulf News. “We have a proven business model and we’re doing 100 per cent year-on-year growth.” He adds that Sokin aims to double its transaction flow next year.

The team in the UAE stands at about 65 people, Modgill discloses. Hiring will include roles in the partnerships team, which works with fintechs and software platforms that embed Sokin’s multi-currency accounts.

The company did not arrive overnight. Sokin entered the UAE nearly three years ago as a strategic partner of Seed Group, a company of The Private Office of Sheikh Saeed bin Ahmed Al Maktoum. Modgill rejects the idea that the expansion is a sudden bet. “We want to be everywhere, not somewhere,” he explains. “We’ve been building the foundations. Now it’s time to accelerate.”

The licence and regulatory approvals is what pushed the firm to bet big on Dubai. Sokin obtained it through its Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) office, where it is regulated as a Money Service Provider with a Category 3D licence. It covers issuing payment instruments and executing payment transactions. It also covers account information and payment initiation services, plus advising on and arranging money services.

A partnership with Ruya Community Islamic Bank LLC delivers the onshore AED services. Ruya, licensed by the Central Bank of the UAE, holds the dirham deposits. UAE businesses can hold a dirham account alongside 28 other currencies.

Competition is crowded. Banks and money transfer firms have operated in the UAE for decades. Modgill argues that price alone is the wrong battleground. Corporates operating in 10 countries often juggle 10 banking partners, 10 accounting platforms and 10 payment acceptance methods, he observes. That adds up to roughly 30 platforms. “What we decided as a team very quickly is what if we just condense that into one?” he says. “We’re probably the only ones in the market that has that full stack.”

Chasing rivals on price would backfire, he warns. In a pricing war, he says, “I might win one transaction, that’s about it.” Retention matters more, he adds, with existing customers doing more business with Sokin each month.

Stablecoins and artificial intelligence feature in the pitch. This year, Sokin launched stablecoin accounts and settlement. It also introduced an MCP connector that lets finance teams send payments through the AI tools they already use. Modgill says the company bought a firm in March that provides the settlement infrastructure.

He is sceptical of rivals rushing in. “We spent 18 months looking at stablecoins and seeing how it would fit into our infrastructure,” he recalls. Stablecoins coexist with Swift, and customers rarely care which rail carries the payment, only that it settles instantly.

AI has limits in this business. Licensing still needs a human touch, Modgill says. He recalls a regulator outside the UAE that made his team remove its AI note-takers from the first call. Sokin uses AI for operational efficiency instead.

Seed Group picks its partners selectively. Hisham Al Gurg, CEO of Seed Group and The Private Office of Sheikh Saeed bin Ahmed Al Maktoum, says the group reviews far more companies than it backs. “Every year, we probably look at more than 2,000 companies,” he says. “How do we pick fewer than 20?” Its role, he outlines, is simple: “to help them succeed.”

He sees fintech as a natural fit for Dubai. “It’s very agile,” he says. “With software and with technology, you can customise, you can localise very quickly.”