The central banks of Saudi Arabia and UAE launch a trial project for a cryptocurrency called Aber, to facilitate financial settlements between the two countries
Yogita Khatri / CoinDesk :
Context & Ripple Effects
Aber arrives six months after Saudi regulators clarified that cryptocurrency trading is illegal in the kingdom — so the two central banks are carving out a state-controlled exception: a closed digital currency for bilateral settlements, not an open market asset. The design echoes the wave of central-bank proofs-of-concept then underway, including Thailand's R3-partnered CBDC trial from months earlier.
What makes the trial worth tracking is where the region went next: the UAE kept deepening its crypto posture, eventually drawing Michael Saylor, Changpeng Zhao, and other executives to Abu Dhabi hunting deals with Emirati investors, and by 2021 the UAE was inside a multilateral cross-border digital-currency project with China's central bank, Hong Kong, and Thailand.
First-order effects
- Commercial banks in Saudi Arabia and the UAE gain a shared settlement rail for cross-border payments between the two countries, with the central banks themselves issuing and controlling the currency rather than delegating to private issuers.
- Saudi Arabia's prohibition on crypto trading now has a visible carve-out at the wholesale layer, forcing its regulators to distinguish publicly between banned retail speculation and sanctioned interbank settlement.
Second-order effects
- Other Gulf and Asian central banks face pressure to join or mirror the model — the UAE's subsequent participation with the People's Bank of China, Hong Kong, and Thailand shows the bilateral template being extended into multilateral corridors.
- The UAE's willingness to host both a state settlement coin and, years later, a courtship of global crypto executives gives it a dual-track position versus Saudi Arabia's stricter stance, sharpening intra-Gulf competition for crypto and fintech activity.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, states converge on a split regime: tightly controlled central-bank digital currencies for cross-border settlement coexisting with bans or heavy restrictions on open retail crypto — institutionalizing the legitimacy gap between sovereign rails and public markets.
- Cross-border payment corridors become instruments of monetary diplomacy, with membership in projects like the China-UAE-Hong Kong-Thailand group signaling alignment independent of dollar-based correspondent banking.
The trend: Central banks are building sovereign digital currencies for cross-border settlement while walling them off from the retail crypto markets they restrict — Aber is an early data point in that split-track playbook.