PhonePe eyes UAE payments, M42 expands in Central Asia, and Core42 and du bet on locally built cybersecurity

Indian digital app PhonePe secures CBUAE in-principle approval for two licenses

India’s PhonePe secured preliminary approval from the Central Bank of the UAE for two licenses: one for retail payment services and card schemes and another for stored value facilities, the company said in a press release (pdf). The first license would let PhonePe handle domestic payments, bill processing, and merchant QR acquiring, while the stored value facilities license covers prepaid instruments and native wallets. The approval allows India’s biggest digital payments app to start working toward the final regulatory sign-off it needs before it can commercially launch — a timeline CEO and Executive Director of International Payments Ritesh Pai told us will be disclosed once final regulatory approvals are granted.

PhonePe is positioning itself to run merchant acquiring, wallets, and remittances on one platform, Pai tells EnterpriseAM, aiming in particular at SMEs it argues are currently underserved.

IN CONTEXT- PhonePe already lets Indian travelers pay via Neopay and Network International terminals through a tie-up with NPCI International (NIPL). The new licenses, once final, would take it further, adding native wallets, prepaid instruments, and a plug-in into domestic rails Aani and Jaywan.

M42 adds another stop to its Central Asia healthcare map

M42 takes Diaverum into Kyrgyzstan: Abu Dhabi health tech group M42 opened its first clinic under its dialysis arm Diaverum in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, state news agency Wam reports. The clinic opens with 15 dialysis stations running three shifts a day, six days a week, and has room to expand to 20. Diaverum is entering a market where an estimated 500k adults, or 10.8% of the adult population, live with chronic kidney disease.

Kazakhstan provides the blueprint: Diaverum entered Kazakhstan a decade ago with nine clinics and has since become its largest private dialysis provider, operating more than 55 clinics and employing over 1k people.

Central Asia is becoming a bigger play for M42. Beyond renal care, the group has partnered with Uzbekistan’s Health Ministry to explore prospects under the country’s genome program.

Core42, TII plan to develop cybersecurity tech

Core42 partners with TII to build home-grown cyber defenses: Core42, G42’s AI infrastructure and sovereign cloud arm, signed a strategic collaboration agreement with the Technology Innovation Institute (TII), the applied research arm of Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council, to develop UAE-built cybersecurity tech, according to a press release (pdf). The two will co-develop, test, and deploy security technologies across Core42’s sovereign cloud and Compass, its generative and agentic AI platform.

What’s on the table: The scope covers hardware security modules, confidential computing, encrypted AI inferencing, secure key management and distribution, data protection, encryption, and trusted computing. In practice, that’s the layer that protects data, models, and keys while they’re being stored, moved, and processed.

Why it matters: Core42 is pushing its definition of sovereignty past data residency. Sovereignty “means more than deciding where data and infrastructure reside,” Core42 SVP Rajeev Nair said. It also means building the technology that protects them. Keeping sensitive AI workloads on UAE soil means less if the security stack around them is still imported, and this agreement aims to build parts of that stack locally. It’s still early days, though: the release frames the tie-up as a way to “explore” and evaluate the technologies and gives no timeline, investment figure, or deployment target.

Du prepares for quantum risk

Du brings post-quantum security to its National Hypercloud: Emirati telco du signed an MoU with Abu Dhabi-based QuantumGate to run QuantumGate’s post-quantum cryptography on du Tech’s National Hypercloud, according to a press release. Du will sell the technology to government entities across the UAE, while QuantumGate will provide the post-quantum expertise and technical support. Data, keys, and cryptographic control will stay within the UAE.

The threat they’re preparing for: Future quantum computers are expected to be able to break the public-key cryptography that secures most digital systems today. The partners are pitching the agreement as a way for government and critical entities to get ahead of that risk.

REMEMBER- The UAE has been dealing with cyber threats in the present too. It fended off organized cyberattacks on its aviation, energy, and education sectors last month.

Where the tech comes from: QuantumGate was spun out in 2024 by VentureOne, the commercialization arm of the Advanced Technology Research Council, and its products run on cryptographic libraries developed by TII.