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Digital Wallet And Payment Gateway Consultancy
Digital wallet and payment gateway consultancy is about helping businesses take money properly. You advise on putting wallets and gateways in place, running them, and improving them, so that transactions go through cleanly, securely and inside the rules.
One activity code covers it at Meydan Free Zone, and it carries a condition most codes do not: approval from the Central Bank of the UAE before your license is issued. This guide covers what the code allows, who buys the work, and the order you have to do things in.
Key Stats at a Glance
What This License Covers
Code 6419.97 covers providing a digital platform or application where users store and manage their financial information: card details, bank account information and electronic money, held securely on their own devices. The platform lets them pay for goods and services through online and mobile channels.
Sitting alongside that is the consultancy work, which is what most firms under this code actually sell. You advise clients on which wallet solution fits, how to connect it to their payment gateway, what security has to be in place, and how to make the experience smooth enough that customers finish the transaction rather than abandoning it.
The scope stretches across mobile wallets, online payment platforms and electronic fund transfers. The aim is always the same two things at once: make payment simpler, and keep sensitive financial information protected while you do it.
What the Consultancy Work Involves
Choosing the solution
Clients rarely know which wallet or gateway suits their business, their volumes or their markets. Picking it, and being able to justify the choice, is the first piece of work.
Integration
A wallet is only useful once it is connected properly to the payment gateway behind it. Getting that integration right, and tested, is where most implementations succeed or fail.
Security
You are advising on systems that hold card details and bank account information. Security measures are not an add-on here. They are the product, and clients will judge you on how seriously you treat them.
User experience
A payment flow that works technically but loses people at the last step is not finished. Part of the job is making the process smooth enough that transactions complete.
Strategy and best practice
Above the individual project, you advise on the technologies and approaches a client should be adopting, so their payment setup is still fit for purpose in two years.
Who Your Clients Will Be
The buyers are businesses that take payments and know their current setup is holding them back:
- Merchants moving from basic card acceptance to wallets and mobile payments
- Online businesses whose checkout is losing customers at the payment step
- Companies expanding into new markets that need different payment methods
- Businesses replacing an ageing gateway or consolidating several of them
The work usually starts as a project and turns into a relationship, because payment infrastructure needs attention every time the client adds a market, a channel or a product line.
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Step by Step Setup Guide
- Step 1, check your name is free: Use the free Company Name Check tool before you commit to branding or buy a domain.
- Step 2, price the setup: Run the cost calculator so you know your first year number. Company formation in Dubai starts from AED 12,500.
- Step 3, get your Central Bank approval: This is the step that decides your timeline. Approval from the Central Bank of the UAE comes before the license, not after.
- Step 4, apply for your license: Once the approval is in hand, apply. A Fawri license speeds the process up.
- Step 5, set up your own operations: Meydan Plus services cover the day to day running side, which keeps your attention on client work rather than admin.
Compliance and What You Need in Place
Central Bank approval comes first
This is the single most important point on the page. Activity 6419.97 needs third-party approval from the Central Bank of the UAE before Meydan Free Zone will issue your license. Plan your timeline around that, and do not sign client work on the assumption the license is a formality.
Anti-money laundering
Activity 6419.97 is exempt from AML rules. To be precise about what that means: the exemption applies to this activity code. It does not remove your other duties, and it certainly does not change what your clients have to do in their own regulated environments. Keep proper books and records from the first invoice.
You are advising on other people's money
Everything under this code touches card details, bank account data and electronic money. Put in writing what you access, where anything is stored, who can see it, and what happens when the engagement ends. Clients in payments ask that question early, and a weak answer costs you the work.
Stay inside your scope
The code covers providing the wallet platform and advising on wallets and gateways. If your plans grow into activities that sit elsewhere, add the codes before you start selling them rather than amending the license afterwards.
Market Opportunity
The demand here is created by a simple fact: every business that sells anything now has to accept payment in more ways than it used to. Cards alone stopped being enough, wallets arrived, mobile payment became normal, and most businesses do not have anyone in house who understands how to connect all of it properly.
That gap is the market. You are not selling a nice-to-have. You are selling the difference between a checkout that converts and one that loses customers at the final step, which is a number the client can see in their own reporting.
The Central Bank approval is worth reframing as an advantage rather than an obstacle. It is a barrier that keeps casual operators out of this code, so the firms that clear it face a thinner field than in unregulated consultancy work. Getting it also gives you something to point at when a client asks why they should trust you with their payment infrastructure.
Conclusion
Digital wallet and payment gateway consultancy is a focused business with one activity code and one gate in front of it.
Getting started is simple with the right sequence. Check your company name, price the setup with the cost calculator, get Central Bank approval, then apply for your license with Fawri if you want it quickly. Meydan Plus services can handle the running of the business once you are trading.
Two things decide how this goes: planning around the Central Bank approval instead of being surprised by it, and being able to show clients that you treat their financial data as seriously as they do.
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