How to Open a Typing Center in Dubai: Licence and Accreditation

This guide is for investors who want to open a typing centre in Dubai and process government transactions for the public. It separates the trade licence from the three accreditation routes (GDRFA’s Amer centres, MOHRE’s business service centres and ICP’s registered typing centres) and says plainly where an authority publishes no criteria or fees. Official pages were read on 5 October 2026.

A typing centre is a channel, not one licence

“Typing centre” is the everyday word for a counter that fills in and submits government forms. The official sources use it for channels authorised by a specific authority. For Dubai there are three you need to know.

Each route is a separate application to a separate authority. Holding one does not give you the others. Our client-side guide to typing centres in Dubai shows how this looks from the customer’s side, built from GDRFA’s published list of Amer centres.

Step one: the DET licence

Start with the trade licence. The UAE Government portal says the business activity “is the basis for selecting the legal form and type of licence, whether commercial, industrial or professional”, and that a trade name must be compatible with the activity (u.ae, steps to start a business on the mainland, updated 16 July 2026). Look at the names on GDRFA’s own lists of service centres and you see the pattern: “Government Transactions”, “Documents Clearing Services”, “Businessmen Services”.

The activity name, code and licence type come from DET’s Search Business Activities tool on Invest in Dubai. That tool answers interactively and we could not read its results on 5 October 2026, so this page does not print a DET code for typing or document clearing. Search it for “typing”, “clearing” and “government transactions”, and check whether the activity lists GDRFA or MOHRE as an external approval. The professional licence guide explains how the licence category follows the activity, and the renewal guide covers the yearly cycle.

Becoming an Amer centre (GDRFA)

GDRFA’s page “Apply for new Amer center” says the service is for investors who want to open an Amer centre “that provides GDRFA services once the investor has fulfilled all the requirements of GDRFA” (read 5 October 2026). The form asks for:

• full name and Emirates ID of the applicant;
• proposed location, with two options: Bur Dubai or Deira;
• proposed area size;
• mobile number, email and request details.

An archived copy of the same page (17 November 2025) also carried the undertaking applicants accept: if approved, to meet the standards of the Amer model centre, covering rehabilitation of the centre, level of service delivery, centre management, human resources management, Emiratisation, systems management, information confidentiality and financial resources management, and to pay all amounts prescribed by the owners of Amer Model Centers on time, without asking for instalments. The amounts themselves are not on the page.

One published figure shows how Amer centres earn on a single transaction: GDRFA’s representative card page states that “If the application is submitted through Amer centres, a fee of AED100 will be added”, on top of collection commissions of AED 20 (Commercial Bank of Dubai) or AED 50 for companies and AED 15 for individuals (Emaratec) (read 5 October 2026).

Becoming a MOHRE business service centre (Tas-heel)

MOHRE’s licence page for service centres did not load for us on 5 October 2026 (the request timed out, and our reading service received a browser check). The last copy we could read is an archive capture of 17 January 2022, which still names the Ministry of Labour. It described the licence as being for centres that provide ministry services through a partnership with the private sector, and set these criteria:

The process ran from online application and audit, through a technical site visit and top management approval, to initial approval, three proposed centre designs, monitoring of the build and final approval after the centre is operating. Documents: company profile, passport copy and family book, trade licence for the same activity if available, location map, detailed interior design and an initial agreement with the landlord. Treat all of this as the last published version, not current rules, and confirm with MOHRE before you sign a lease.

Registering with ICP as a typing centre

ICP published a user guide for typing centres in January 2022 (version 0.1). It is no longer on icp.gov.ae (HTTP 404 on 5 October 2026); we read an archived copy. It describes registration on ICP smart services: choose “Typing Centers Registration”, confirm your email within 15 minutes, select the typing centre type, enter the establishment details, confirm a one-time password and create users. To activate the account, the guide says the centre must “pay security deposit and yearly subscription fees”, with the subscription active for one year after payment. The guide’s screenshots were made with a test account and the guide itself warns its information may be inaccurate, so we do not print amounts from them. ICP does not publish a current fee for this on the pages we read.

Premises and staff checklist

• A DET licence with an activity whose name matches the work, and a business location as the u.ae mainland steps require.
• For an Amer centre: a site in Bur Dubai or Deira and an area size to declare on GDRFA’s form.
• For a MOHRE centre: by the 2022 criteria, at least 5,000 square feet on a ground floor with parking and public transport nearby.
• Owner with no violations record and experience running ministry services (MOHRE, 2022).
• Staffing planned around Emiratisation and human resources standards (GDRFA undertaking).
• Systems and data handling that meet information confidentiality standards (GDRFA undertaking).
• For each smart services account: internet access, an active email address and a mobile number for one-time passwords (ICP typing centre guide, 2022).

What an ordinary typing shop can do without accreditation

No authority we read publishes a list of what an unaccredited typing shop may do, so this section sticks to what is published. On the GDRFA service pages we read, the channels are GDRFA’s digital channels and Amer centres. MOHRE’s PRO card page lists its service centres, website, app and Tawseel. u.ae names typing centres registered by ICP or GDRFA for offline visa applications. An unaccredited shop is on none of these lists, so it cannot present itself as a place where those transactions are filed. What it may sell beyond that depends on the activity on its DET licence. If you only want to help companies with paperwork around these channels, that is a PRO services business, covered in our guide on how to start a PRO services company in Dubai.

What it costs

Only fragments are official. GDRFA publishes no fee for opening an Amer centre, only the undertaking to pay amounts prescribed by the Amer Model Centers owners. MOHRE’s 2022 page lists no fee under payment. ICP’s current deposit and subscription amounts are not on the pages we read. On the earning side, two official figures exist: the AED 100 GDRFA adds when a representative card goes through an Amer centre, and the maximum commission of AED 72 (written Dhs.72) that business centres may charge for a MOHRE PRO card (MOHRE page archived 26 March 2026). For a plan, ask each authority in writing.

A small worked example (our arithmetic). If a centre files 30 representative card applications a month through the Amer channel, the published add-on comes to 30 x AED 100 = AED 3,000 a month. The page does not say how that AED 100 is shared between GDRFA and the centre, so treat AED 3,000 as gross add-on fees, not the centre’s income.

Getting clients

The demand is on the client side: Semrush shows 12,100 monthly searches in the UAE for “typing center” and 2,400 for “typing center dubai” (read on 5 October 2026). Companies also post document clearing requests on emirae.pro. A centre that lists its firm pays AED 100 per client who opened contacts to it, with free profile and offers and no subscription (pricing, how it works). Read lead generation for UAE service firms and B2B lead platforms in the UAE for the other channels.

What is not published

• The DET activity code and licence type for typing or document clearing: the official tool exists but its results were not readable to us on 5 October 2026.
• GDRFA’s criteria, size minimum and fees for a new Amer centre beyond the form and the undertaking.
• MOHRE’s current licence page for service centres: unreachable on 5 October 2026; the criteria above date from January 2022.
• ICP’s current deposit and subscription fees for typing centres.
• Any official list of services an unaccredited typing shop may offer.