How to Open a Company Bank Account in the UAE: Steps and Costs

A UAE trade licence does not come with a bank account. The two are issued by different bodies under different rules, and a company can be perfectly legal and still be turned down by four banks in a row. The account is a commercial decision by a private institution, and it is decided on the file you submit rather than on the licence you hold.

This page sets out what that file contains, how the process runs, and what the account costs once it exists. Every figure comes from a bank’s own published schedule, retrieved on 10 August 2026.

What kind of company you have decides the route

• Mainland. Licensed by the emirate’s economic department, able to trade anywhere in the UAE and to hold premises and visas. The most straightforward case for a bank, because substance is easy to evidence.
• Free zone. Licensed by the zone authority, able to trade inside the zone and internationally, with local trade routed through the mainland rules. Ordinary for banks, with the zone itself sometimes affecting how the file is read.
• Offshore. Registered with RAK ICC or JAFZA Offshore, holding rather than trading, no premises and no visas. The hardest case, and the one covered separately in our guide on offshore bank accounts in Dubai.

If the owners live abroad, that adds a second dimension to any of the three. That case is set out in our guide on opening a UAE account without residency.

What the bank is deciding

Compliance teams work through four questions, in this order, and every document you supply belongs to one of them.

1. Who owns this company, ultimately? Not the shareholder on the licence if that shareholder is another company, but the natural people at the end of the chain.
2. Is the business real? Contracts, invoices, a website, named customers and suppliers. A licence proves registration, not activity.
3. Where will the money come from and go? Countries, counterparties, currencies and monthly volumes, expressed as numbers.
4. Does the story hold together? A consultancy expecting large inbound transfers from an unrelated sector will be asked why, and the answer needs to exist before the question.

Documents to prepare

1. Trade licence, valid, with the activity list that matches what the company actually does.
2. Certificate of incorporation, memorandum and articles.
3. Shareholder register and the full ownership chain up to natural persons.
4. Passports and Emirates IDs of shareholders, directors and every proposed signatory.
5. Ejari or the tenancy contract for the company premises.
6. Board resolution authorising the account and naming the signatories.
7. Two or three signed contracts or issued invoices.
8. A short written note on expected activity: who pays you, from where, how much, how often.

The last item is free to produce and changes outcomes more than any other. It answers question three above before the bank has to ask it.

What the account costs

Twenty-three of the 48 licensed UAE banks publish a business tariff in a form that can be quoted. The table shows the range across them, from no balance requirement at all to a quarter of a million dirhams.

Sources: Mbank Fees and Charges Business; Mashreq NEOBiz Schedule of Charges, version July 2026; RAKBANK Business Banking Accounts Service and Price Guide, with effect from 18 April 2026; ADIB Business Accounts Schedule of Charges V17; FAB Business Accounts Key Facts Statement; HSBC UAE Corporate Tariff and Charges, July 2026; UAB, Ajman Bank, Bank of Sharjah, CBD and Zand product schedules; Emirates NBD Business Banking Schedule of Charges. All retrieved 10 August 2026.

Read the balance column as capital, not as a threshold. A AED 50,000 requirement is AED 50,000 removed from working capital for as long as the account is open, which for a young company is usually a larger number than any fee on the page.

How the process runs

1. Choose the tier before the bank. Applying for a product your company cannot support wastes weeks; the balance requirement is the filter.
2. Assemble the file completely. Incomplete applications are not refused, they are parked, and nothing tells you.
3. Submit and expect questions. They usually concern the ownership chain or one transaction in the statements you supplied.
4. Answer with documents. An explanation without an attachment restarts the clock.
5. Sign. Some banks require the signatories present, some accept video verification, and this varies by tier within the same bank.
6. Activate. The account existing and the account working are separate moments: cards, online access and limits follow.

Why applications are refused

• The activity list on the licence does not match the described business.
• Ownership stops at a corporate shareholder with no natural person identified.
• No evidence of trading: no contracts, no invoices, no customers named.
• Expected volumes are vague, or implausible for the stated activity.
• The company has no local substance at all beyond the registration.
• Several simultaneous applications, which produce several simultaneous refusals.

Five of those six are fixed by preparation rather than by choosing a different bank. That is the practical message: the file decides the outcome far more than the logo on the door.

What actually takes the time

No bank publishes a timetable, and any page quoting one in days has invented it. What can be described is where the delay sits, because it is rarely where applicants expect.

The application itself is short. What extends it is the gap between what the company can prove and what the bank needs proved. A mainland company with an office, a signed lease, two customers and a resident owner supplies that in an afternoon. A free zone company whose owner lives abroad, whose shareholder is another company and whose first invoice has not been issued yet is answering the same questions with weaker evidence, and each answer generates the next question.

The parts outside the bank are the slowest of all. Attesting a document issued in another country is measured in weeks and no bank can shorten it. If any part of your ownership chain sits abroad, start that before you choose where to apply.

After the account opens

Opening it is not the end of the relationship, and three ordinary events close more accounts than any refusal does.

• The licence lapses. An expired trade licence suspends the account, and reinstating it takes longer than renewing the licence did.
• Activity diverges from what was declared. New countries, new counterparties or a jump in volume triggers a review even when everything is legitimate. One email in advance prevents it.
• Periodic re-verification is ignored. Banks refresh ownership and source of funds documents on a cycle, and treating the request as optional is read as a refusal to comply.
• The account goes dormant. A company that opens an account before it trades can find it flagged before the first invoice arrives.

None of these is unusual and none is a judgement about the business. They are the ordinary maintenance of a regulated relationship, and they cost minutes when handled early and weeks when handled late.

Choosing the bank

• A new company with no revenue yet should start from the accounts with no balance requirement, where Mashreq NEOBiz Pro at AED 99 and RAKBANK RAKstarter at AED 103.95 sit.
• A trading company paying many suppliers should weigh the local transfer line, where ADIB at AED 2 beats most of the market.
• A company with genuine international flows may be better served by a bank with a correspondent network, which is what the higher fees at HSBC buy.
• A company that can hold a balance comfortably can take the no fee tiers: Emirates NBD charges nothing monthly and nothing on local transfers against AED 50,000.

What this page does not cover

• Approval. A published product is not an open account, and no one can guarantee one.
• Credit. Overdrafts, cards and trade finance are relationship products priced separately from the account.
• The 25 banks that publish nothing. Absence from the table says only that their tariff is not public, and several of them are perfectly ordinary choices for a company that asks them directly for a quote.
• Sector rules. A few activities, including anything touching virtual assets or money transfer, carry their own licensing conditions that sit on top of everything on this page.

A note on the word corporate, which appears on most pages about this subject including the earlier version of this one. In practice UAE banks reserve it for a segment above the small and medium business tier: relationship managed accounts, treasury services and credit facilities for established companies. A newly licensed company of three people asking for a corporate account is usually asking for the wrong product, and the tier it actually needs is the business or SME one, which is what the table above shows. Getting the vocabulary right shortens the first conversation and avoids an application that was never going to succeed.

To compare every licensed bank, including the licence each holds with the Central Bank, the tariff each publishes and the official complaint route, start from the list of UAE business banks.