Bahrain-based Shariah compliant CoinMENA has secured a license from the European Union, allowing it to expand its geographical reach in MENA and beyond.
“Regulatory compliance is a main priority for CoinMENA. In addition to expanding our service offering, the EU license would strengthen our banking relationships with regional and global banks. This move fulfills one of our primary objectives which is to be the best and easiest platform to on-ramp and off-ramp from crypto in the region. This is just the beginning for CoinMENA as we aim to roll out additional crypto financial services built on Web 3.0 and crypto rails,” said Co-Founders Dina Sam’an and Talal Tabbaa in a joint statement. The platform did not specify which EU market the license is from.
The digital exchange was launched in 2021 by Dina, Talal and Yazan Barghuthi and is regulated by the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB). CoinMENA claims that it has grown 140% on a monthly basis over the last seven months, more than double the number of listed crypto assets to 13 from five, and plans to list several more in the “coming weeks”. The cryptocurrency platform currently supports five countries (Bahrain, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Oman), allowing users to transact using their local currency.
CoinMENA is one of two Islamic cryptocurrency exchanges licensed by the CBB, the other being Rain. CoinMena last September secured US$9.5 million in funding, backed by the likes of BECO Capital and Kenetic, among others.