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First Abu Dhabi Bank

“Can the UAE's largest bank become the region's dominant embedded-finance rail — issuing, acquiring, and payouts — through a carved-out payments subsidiary and API-first distribution?”

Founded2017
HQAbu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
IndustryBank / National
The story

FAB was created in 2017 by merging FGB (consumer/cards) and NBAD (wholesale/capital markets) to form the UAE's largest bank. Since 2020 it has been aggressively rewiring itself around embedded payments infrastructure — carving out its payments business into a subsidiary (Magnati), launching a merchant 'payment as a platform', and building an API-first developer portal (FABeAccess) to embed FAB rails into fintechs and corporates. The 2025 Thunes partnership extends that thesis into cross-border payouts.

Last 12 months
2025-11
Product timeline
2017
Formed via merger of First Gulf Bank (FGB) and National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD).· pivot
2020
Launched 'payment as a platform' service for merchants aggregating cards, wallets, QR, BNPL and prepaid issuance via a single API.· banking
2020
Announced carve-out of payments business into a fully owned subsidiary (later branded Magnati) covering direct acquiring, issuer processing and acquiring processing.· pivot
2023
Launched SlicePay BNPL card in the UAE under Dubai First trademark, powered by Mastercard Installments Program.· card
2025
Selected Thunes for global mobile wallet payouts across 130+ countries via Thunes Direct Global Network.· banking
Regulated entities
1
regulatory licence held by First Abu Dhabi Bank
Licence types, jurisdictions and registered entities are in the Embedded Finance Index report.
Consortium membership
First Abu Dhabi Bank is a named member of an industry alliance building shared payment/settlement infrastructure alongside these organizations — full details on /consortiums.
SWIFT shared ledger for tokenised cross-border paymentsOperational · launched 2026-07-09
ANZBNP ParibasBNYCitiDBSFirstRand BankHSBCItaú UnibancoLloyds BankMashreqMUFG BankOCBCStandard CharteredUBSUOBWells Fargo
The stack
8 layers disclosed in First Abu Dhabi Bank’s embedded-finance stack
Payments / PSP
Magnati (in-house)FAB Payment as a Platform (self-operated)
Banking / BaaS
in the full report
Card issuing
in the full report
Card network
in the full report
Lending
in the full report
Unified APIs
in the full report
FX & payouts
in the full report
Treasury
in the full report
Accounting gap: minor
11 more providers across 7 layers, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.