Fuze - Dubai, UAEDigital asset infrastructure
Company Profile · Fintech · Digital Assets
Fuze.
The regulated rail that turns a bank, fintech or marketplace into a crypto and stablecoin business - through a single API.
Fuze - Dubai, UAEThe regulated rail that turns a bank, fintech or marketplace into a crypto and stablecoin business - through a single API.
Most people meet crypto through an app - a screen where a balance goes up and down. Fuze lives one layer beneath that screen. The Dubai-based company builds the regulated infrastructure that lets banks, fintechs, neobanks and marketplaces offer digital assets to their own customers without assembling the custody, compliance, liquidity and settlement machinery themselves.
The pitch is deliberately unglamorous. Fuze does not want to be a consumer brand. It wants to be the layer everyone else builds on. A remittance provider can plug in stablecoin rails. A neobank can embed buy, sell and swap across roughly 100 digital assets. A payroll platform can settle across borders. In each case the customer sees their own brand; Fuze runs quietly underneath.
That positioning - infrastructure over interface - is the whole strategy. Fuze reports it has onboarded more than 400 institutions, covers 65 countries and has processed over $2 billion in digital asset volume since launching in 2023. Those numbers did not come from a viral app. They came from being the connective tissue between traditional finance and regulated digital assets in a region that decided to license the industry rather than ban it.
The company was founded in 2023 by Mo Ali Yusuf, Arpit Mehta and Srijan Shetty - and, notably, during a stretch the industry still calls "crypto winter." Prices were falling and confidence with them. Fuze raised a record $14 million seed round anyway, a signal that investors were separating the volatility of tokens from the durability of the rails that move them.
Fuze splits its offering into two arms - payments and wealth - both delivered as embeddable, API-driven products.
Embed regulated buy, sell, swap and hold of 100+ digital assets directly into a partner's own app.
Since 2023Institutional liquidity and large-ticket execution for banks and enterprises trading over the counter.
Since 2023Send, receive and hold stablecoins with on/off-ramp support for faster, cheaper, programmable settlement.
Since 2024AED-denominated settlement, instant business payments and AI-driven automation - backed by a UAE Central Bank payments license.
2025Global money movement across 65 countries built on stablecoin rails.
Since 2024Yield generation on idle assets and collateralized crypto lending, offered as embedded products.
Since 2024Offering regulated digital assets is not one problem - it is a dozen. A bank needs custody it can trust, liquidity it can source, compliance and KYC/AML it can defend to a regulator, settlement it can reconcile, and a license it can actually operate under. Building all of that in-house is slow, expensive and easy to get wrong.
Fuze compresses that stack into an integration. The institution keeps its customer relationship and brand; Fuze absorbs the regulatory and operational weight. The problem it solves is less "how do I trade crypto" and more "how do I offer it without betting the bank."
Plenty of firms will sell you crypto-as-a-service. Fewer are licensed by Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) and hold a Retail Payment Services and Card Schemes license from the UAE Central Bank - a combination that lets Fuze offer both digital asset infrastructure and regulated payments.
It is also SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certified. In a category where the fastest mover often flames out, Fuze's edge is that it can pass the checks a bank's risk committee actually cares about. Permission, here, is the product.
Two rounds, both notable for their timing and their backers. When a global digital assets firm and a UAE telecom's investment arm co-lead the same round, they are betting on the plumbing.
Mo Ali Yusuf, Arpit Mehta and Srijan Shetty launch Fuze to build regulated digital asset infrastructure for MENA.
One of the region's largest seed rounds - closed despite a bearish crypto market.
Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority licenses Fuze for digital asset operations.
Fuze rolls out stablecoin infrastructure, cross-border payments and a crypto payment gateway.
Fuze launches FuzePay and secures a Retail Payment Services and Card Schemes license.
Galaxy and e& capital co-lead a round to scale across MENA and Turkey, with eyes on Pakistan.
CEO Mo Ali Yusuf did not arrive at crypto from a trading floor. Canadian-born and Dubai-based, he held leadership roles at Visa, Checkout.com, Booz & Company and Emirates NBD before founding Fuze - roughly a decade spent learning how payments and financial services actually work under the hood.
That background shows in the product. Fuze reads less like a crypto experiment and more like payments infrastructure that happens to move digital assets. Co-founders Arpit Mehta and Srijan Shetty round out the operating and engineering leadership.
Fuze sits in the crypto-as-a-service and stablecoin-infrastructure category alongside names like Fireblocks, Zero Hash, Ramp and MoonPay - but with a regional wedge. It is built for MENA and Turkey, licensed under the exact regulators those markets answer to, and now eyeing high-growth emerging markets like Pakistan.
The bet is geographic as much as technical: the UAE chose to regulate digital assets early, and Fuze was ready when the door opened. In infrastructure, being local and licensed is its own kind of defensibility.
It provides regulated digital asset infrastructure via API, letting banks, fintechs and enterprises offer crypto trading, stablecoin payments, custody and OTC services under their own brand.
Headquartered in Dubai, UAE, founded in 2023 by Mo Ali Yusuf, Arpit Mehta and Srijan Shetty.
Yes - licensed by Dubai's VARA and holding a Retail Payment Services and Card Schemes license from the UAE Central Bank. It is also SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certified.
Over $26 million - a $14M seed in 2023 and a $12.2M Series A in 2025 co-led by Galaxy and e& capital.
Banks, neobanks, fintechs, remittance providers, marketplaces, PSPs, payroll platforms and wealth apps - 400+ institutions onboarded across 65 countries.