Emirates NBD's Liv Adds USDU, a Central Bank-Registered Dollar Token

Liv, the digital bank run by Emirates NBD, is adding USDU, a U.S. dollar stablecoin registered by the Central Bank of the UAE, to its app, the companies said in a press release on Monday. To launch it, Liv is waiving crypto trading fees for 90 days.

Liv has close to half a million users, the release says. Its crypto service, Liv X, already runs on Aquanow, a Dubai-licensed broker that says it has processed more than $130 billion in trading volume.

What the token can and can't do

A stablecoin is a token meant to hold a fixed value, here $1, backed by cash held elsewhere. Under the UAE's Payment Token Services Regulation, payments for digital assets in the country can only be made in regular money or a registered foreign payment token, Universal said when it launched USDU on Jan. 29. USDU was the first token registered that way.

The flip side: USDU "may not be used for general payment purposes in the UAE," Universal's launch notice says. Monday's release repeats that it is not a general-purpose domestic payment instrument. In practice, it is a dollar balance for buying and selling crypto.

Who holds the dollars

Universal, the ADGM-regulated issuer, says each token is backed 1:1 by dollars in onshore accounts at Emirates NBD and Mashreq, with monthly attestations by an outside accounting firm. That puts Emirates NBD on both ends: it safeguards part of the reserves and now sells the token to its own app customers, tbreak reported.

Rohit Garg, Emirates NBD's chief digital officer for retail banking, said in the release that USDU gives customers a "secure, transparent and regulated bridge to digital assets" inside their everyday banking app.

The release does not say when USDU goes live in the app, what fees apply after the 90 days, or whether users can send it to outside wallets. It also gives no figure for how many USDU tokens exist.

In our opinion: Emirates NBD now sits on both sides of this token, holding part of the reserves and selling USDU in its own app, which makes Universal's monthly attestations the document worth reading. Monday's release gives no supply figure, so the next attestation is the place to check how many tokens exist. The 90-day fee holiday is generous; the more telling number arrives on day 91.