Imagine a business that pays an overseas supplier in stablecoins. The transfer is confirmed within minutes, but the supplier cannot access the funds in the currency needed to fulfil the order. A bank review holds up the conversion, the delivery date approaches, and neither party knows how long the delay will last.
The payment has worked as a blockchain transaction. As a business transaction, however, it has fallen short.

This distinction matters as stablecoins gain attention as a more efficient way to move money internationally. They offer genuine advantages, including faster settlement and the potential to reduce transfer costs. But businesses do not adopt payment methods simply because the technology works. They need to know that money will arrive when expected, that recipients can use it, and that problems can be resolved without leaving both parties in limbo.

For stablecoins to become a practical part of global commerce, the industry must address the parts of a payment journey that technology alone cannot fix.

The Real Cost Is More Than the Transfer Fee

Sending money across borders remains expensive, despite years of investment in digital payments. World Bank data puts the global average cost of remittances at approximately 6.36% per US$100, down from 8.89% in 2010. Progress has been uneven, with established corridors such as the UAE–India and US–Mexico benefiting from more developed financial networks, while some routes serving Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia continue to face higher costs.

The UAE illustrates why this matters. With expatriates accounting for around 88% of its population, the country is a major centre for international remittances, particularly to South Asia. Improvements in payment infrastructure have implications not only for individuals sending money home but also for companies paying suppliers, contractors and employees abroad.

Stablecoins could help reduce some of the friction involved. Yet headline transaction volumes can obscure how much progress has actually been made in everyday payments. The $8.82 trillion in stablecoin transaction volume cited for the first half of 2026 includes activity that is not necessarily linked to purchasing goods, paying suppliers or settling commercial invoices. Estimates of real-world stablecoin payment activity, at approximately $390 billion, offer a different perspective on adoption.

The distinction is important. Moving a digital asset between wallets is not the same as completing a payment that meets a business’s commercial needs. The latter requires the entire process, from funding and settlement to conversion, reconciliation and confirmation, to work reliably.

Businesses Need Someone to Turn to When Payments Fail

Conventional payment systems have plenty of shortcomings, but businesses generally operate within established arrangements for investigating failed transfers, handling refunds and determining who is responsible for a loss. Stablecoin payments introduce a different set of participants and processes, and responsibility can become less clear when something goes wrong.

A cross-border transaction might involve a stablecoin issuer, a payment provider, an exchange and one or more banks. Each may have its own compliance obligations, operating procedures and timelines. A transaction can settle on-chain while remaining inaccessible to its intended recipient because a bank review, liquidity issue or other operational problem interrupts the next stage.

For a business, the consequences are tangible. A supplier may delay an order, a shipment may miss its window, or a contractual payment deadline may be breached. The savings achieved through faster settlement can quickly lose their value if the business cannot predict when the recipient will actually receive usable funds.

This is why dispute handling, refunds, transaction restrictions and clear escalation procedures need to be considered from the outset. A system designed for commercial use cannot rely on the assumption that every transaction will proceed as intended.

There is room for infrastructure that brings together blockchain-based payments and familiar financial risk controls. Such systems could help coordinate transaction monitoring, counterparty checks and the handling of disputed or interrupted payments.

The objective is not to recreate every layer of traditional banking, but to give businesses a clear process and an accountable party when a payment requires intervention.

International Payments Need International Coordination

The same issue arises at the regulatory level. A business making payments across several markets should not have to navigate a completely different set of operational expectations at every border.

Europe’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), the US GENIUS Act, and frameworks developed by the UAE’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) and Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE) represent important efforts to establish rules for digital assets. However, they differ in their treatment of issuers, reserves, disclosures and permitted activities. Approval in one jurisdiction does not automatically establish acceptance in another.

Information-sharing requirements create another challenge. Where Travel Rule protocols are implemented differently, payment providers may struggle to exchange information about transaction participants consistently. This can introduce friction even when the underlying transfer is technically straightforward.
The answer is not necessarily a single global rulebook.

Countries have different legal systems and regulatory priorities. What the industry needs is greater compatibility between those systems: clearer expectations for cross-border transactions, more consistent information-sharing arrangements and practical ways for compliant providers to operate across jurisdictions.

For businesses, regulatory predictability is part of payment reliability. Companies need to understand the conditions under which funds can be transferred, held or released before committing to a payment method.

The Banking Relationship Still Matters

Stablecoins may change how value moves, but they do not eliminate the need to connect digital assets with conventional money. Businesses still need access to fiat currencies, dependable liquidity and banking services that support their operations.
That connection remains a weakness in parts of the market.

Liquidity can be spread across different issuers and blockchain networks, while some banks have chosen to reduce their exposure to digital asset companies rather than develop services for them.

The broader lesson is that blockchain infrastructure cannot operate in isolation. Its commercial usefulness depends partly on the strength of the institutions and services that connect it to the wider financial system.

Reliability Is What Will Make the Difference

None of this means that compliance controls should be weakened. Stablecoin issuers and payment providers must be able to respond to sanctions requirements, suspicious activity and other legitimate reasons to restrict transactions. But businesses also need transparency about why a payment has been held, what steps are required to resolve the issue and who is responsible for communicating the outcome.

Smart contracts can automate agreed payment conditions, but they cannot independently settle every legal dispute or reconcile conflicting requirements across jurisdictions. Those responsibilities must be addressed through contracts, institutions and operating procedures designed around the realities of cross-border commerce.

The next stage of stablecoin adoption will depend on how well the industry deals with these less visible parts of the payment experience. Better settlement technology is valuable, but it must be matched by dependable banking access, compatible regulatory arrangements and clear responsibility when transactions do not go to plan.

For businesses, the question is not simply whether stablecoins can move money faster. It is whether they can make international payments more predictable, easier to manage and less costly in practice.

That is the standard the industry must meet if stablecoins are to become more than an alternative way to transfer digital value.

(Author Info: Jack Tang is an accomplished fintech entrepreneur, at the intersection of payments infrastructure and digital assets. As Co-founder & CEO of London-based BoomFi, Jack leads the platform’s work in crypto payment infrastructure. He has over ten years of experience in entrepreneurship, building and scaling businesses across consumer and enterprise markets.)

By Gopal Agarwal, Director, Ryan, Saudi Arabia

When “It’s All Within the Family” Is No Longer Enough

When the Zakat, Tax and Customs Authority (“ZATCA”) amended the Kingdom’s Transfer Pricing By-Laws in 2023, the change was largely viewed as a technical expansion of the existing framework. Transfer pricing obligations, which had historically applied to income taxpayers and mixed-ownership entities, were extended to Zakat payers for financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2024.

Since then, the broader significance of that change is becoming clearer.

The amendment brought transfer pricing into the world of Saudi-owned corporate groups, including some of the Kingdom’s largest and most established family businesses. Many of these groups have no foreign parent, no offshore intellectual property and no cross-border royalty arrangements. Their businesses may be entirely Saudi in ownership and operations. For many, transfer pricing had therefore been viewed as a concern primarily for multinational groups managing transactions across borders.

That assumption no longer holds. For many family-owned groups, including wholly Saudi-owned groups with no foreign parent or cross-border transactions, transfer pricing is now firmly within the compliance landscape.

The critical point is that transfer pricing does not depend on a transaction crossing a border. The Saudi Transfer Pricing By-Laws apply to controlled transactions between related parties or persons under common control. A transaction between two Saudi companies owned by the same family can thereby fall within the transfer pricing framework, even where there is no international element.

The Border Is No Longer the Boundary

This is particularly relevant for family offices because their structures naturally contain a network of related entities – holding companies, operating businesses, real estate vehicles, investment entities and the family office itself. As these structures have evolved, so have the arrangements between them.

A family group may have intercompany loans provided without interest, management services charged at a nominal or flat fee, properties leased at historic rates, guarantees provided without consideration and shared employees whose costs are never formally allocated. These arrangements may have made perfect commercial sense when viewed as decisions within a single family-owned economic unit.

The transfer pricing regime asks a different question: would independent parties have agreed to the same arrangements on the same terms, and can the group demonstrate why?

The challenge for family offices is hence often not a lack of commercial rationale. It is that the rationale has historically existed in people’s understanding rather than in agreements, policies, benchmarking or contemporaneous documentation.

The Transactions Hiding in Plain Sight

For many family groups, the hardest question is surprisingly basic: what related-party transactions do we have?

Family businesses often operate through multiple entities, finance teams and accounting systems. Some arrangements are documented formally; others exist through journal entries, emails or simply an established way of working. Shared employees, IT, procurement, finance and management support may never have been separately identified as intercompany transactions.

Transaction mapping is consequently an important starting point. The objective is not simply to identify intercompany invoices, but to understand how funding, services, people, assets, intellectual property and economic benefits move across the group.

This becomes particularly important during succession, restructuring or consolidation. What appears internally to be a straightforward family restructuring may require a different assessment from a transfer pricing perspective.

Disclosure Today, Documentation Tomorrow

Two documents sit at the heart of the documentation requirement. The Master File describes the family group as a whole, its ownership and organizational structure, main business activities, intercompany financing arrangements and overall transfer pricing policies. The Local File focuses on the Saudi entity itself. It sets out each related-party transaction, who performs which functions, owns which assets and bears which risks, and includes a benchmarking analysis showing that the pricing is consistent with what independent parties would have agreed. Together, the two files allow ZATCA to understand both the group and the individual transaction, and to test whether the pricing can be supported.

For Zakat payers with related-party transactions, the Controlled Transaction Disclosure Form (“CTDF”) is required with the annual return within 120 days of year-end, together with the required auditor’s affidavit[1]. This disclosure requirement is broader than the thresholds determining whether Local File and Master File documentation is required. So, a transaction falling below the documentation threshold does not necessarily fall outside the disclosure framework.

The documentation requirements are phased in. For financial years 2024 to 2026, a group with related-party transactions of up to Saudi riyal (SAR) 48 million is not required to prepare Local File and Master File documentation, preparation is optional for transactions between SAR 48 million and SAR 100 million, and it is required for transactions of SAR 100 million or more. From 2027, documentation becomes mandatory for transactions above SAR 48 million.

The significance of 2027 is therefore clear: the transition period is narrowing.

Once requested by ZATCA, Local and Master Files generally need to be produced within 30 days. For a group that has already mapped its transactions and established its transfer pricing policies, this may be manageable. For one beginning the exercise only after receiving a request, 30 days can be a very short period in which to reconstruct agreements, obtain financial information and undertake benchmarking.

The sensible approach is to use the transition period proactively – understand the group’s related-party transactions, identify potential gaps and formalize arrangements before the requirements become more demanding.

In this context, transfer pricing discipline can become a broader governance signal. A group that can clearly explain who performs a function, who owns an asset, who bears the risk, who receives the benefit and why an intercompany charge exists demonstrates a level of institutional maturity that extends beyond tax compliance.

The Question Family Offices Should Be Asking Now

For Saudi family businesses, transfer pricing represents a shift from viewing related-party arrangements primarily through the lens of common ownership to considering them through the lens of economic substance and commercial rationale.

The objective is not to formalise every family-business decision or impose complexity where none is warranted. Rather, it is to ensure that transactions between related entities have a clear commercial basis, are appropriately priced where required, and can be supported by evidence that reflects how the business actually operates.

As 2027 approaches, the transition period should be viewed not merely as time before a compliance deadline, but as an opportunity to strengthen the governance of the family enterprise.

The real test is not whether a family group has related-party transactions. It is whether the group understands them, has a defensible basis for them, and can demonstrate that basis when required.

Disclaimer: This article is intended for general information only and does not constitute tax, legal, accounting or other professional advice. It reflects the tax rules in force as of the publication date, and the described regulatory landscape continues to develop. Readers should obtain professional advice appropriate to their own facts and circumstances before acting on any matter discussed.

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With Dubai fast-tracking agentic AI and AI use among DIFC financial firms rising sharply, Samir Akel, Regional Vice President, Emerging Markets at Nintex, sets out how orchestration turns agentic AI into results for UAE banks and insurers.

This week, much of the region’s technology community has gathered in Abu Dhabi for AI Everything, and the question on the show floor has moved on. A year ago, banks and insurers asked whether to deploy AI agents; today they want to know how to make those agents deliver results across an entire customer journey.

Government is setting the pace. On 5 October, the Dubai Future Foundation launched an agentic AI accelerator covering 33 government entities and more than 300 public-facing use cases, building on the federal target to run half of government services and operations on agentic AI within two years. Few countries have put a number and a deadline on agentic AI. The UAE has done both.

Finance is keeping up. The Dubai Financial Services Authority’s survey of 661 DIFC firms found that 52% now use AI, up from 33% a year earlier, while generative AI use rose by 166%; the regulator also noted that, for many firms, adoption is still at an early stage. UAE finance has AI in many places. The value comes when those pieces work together.

Work in financial services is fragmented

Follow a corporate account opening at a typical UAE bank. The application lands in a portal or a relationship manager’s inbox; documents and identity are checked, sanctions screening runs in a separate tool, a risk team reviews the file, a committee signs it off and operations sets up the account in core banking. That’s six steps, six systems and one waiting customer.

AI agents speed up individual steps: an agent can extract a trade licence in seconds or draft a risk summary in minutes. Then the file sits in a queue for a reviewer who has no idea it is ready. The task gets faster, while the journey stays as slow as its slowest handoff.

That gap is the coordination tax, made up of the hours lost chasing approvals, re-keying data and fielding “where is my application?” calls. In banking, insurance and payments, where one journey can cross half a dozen teams, it is often the largest cost nobody actually measures.

Process is the foundation

Institutions that turn AI into outcomes start by understanding how work actually runs, and regulated firms have a head start here because they already document their processes for supervisors. The task is to map those processes as they really operate (workarounds and exceptions included) and give each step to the right worker.

Steps that must run identically every time, such as sanctions checks and payment releases, suit rules-based workflow. Reading documents and reasoning over unusual cases suit AI agents. Judgement belongs to people. With the Central Bank’s AI guidance for the sector placing clear emphasis on human oversight, deciding where people sit in a process is now part of designing it.

Orchestration makes AI operational

Once the process is clear, orchestration connects it. It coordinates people, systems, data and agents across a whole journey, deciding who or what acts next and routing exceptions to the right person before they become delays.

Think of an airport, where more aircraft add capacity only when air traffic control sequences them. AI agents work in the same way.

For a bank or insurer, orchestration brings one view of every application, claim or payment. Core banking and policy platforms keep their role while work flows between them, and each orchestrated journey becomes a template for the next, so the tenth deployment goes live faster than the first.

A 90-day starting point

Finance can borrow the government’s 90-day rhythm. Pick one journey that crosses at least three systems and two departments, such as SME lending or a motor claim, and map it as it runs today. Count the handoffs and measure the time lost between them; that figure is your coordination tax. Then assign each step to a rule, an agent or a person, orchestrate the whole journey and track time to decision. Reuse what works.

The orchestrators will lead

At the accelerator launch, Digital Dubai’s Director General said the future of digital government depends on an integrated ecosystem that brings expertise, data and capabilities together. The same holds inside every bank.

Over the next year, the number of AI agent use cases across UAE banking and government will grow rapidly. The institutions that pull ahead will be those with a platform to orchestrate and govern those agents, taking them from pilot to production at scale, while keeping people in control. In the AI era, operational advantage belongs to the orchestrators.