A Wio Business account with every company we form — prepared, submitted and followed by us, at no extra cost

What is included, and what it costs

For every incorporation and every freelance permit Polaris completes, the following is part of the service and carries no fee:

• An eligibility check before the licence is issued: the activity wording, the shareholding, the signatory and the office arrangement are reviewed against what the bank asks for, so that the licence we obtain is one the bank can bank.
• The file, prepared to the bank’s standard: the corporate documents, the proof of address, the identity documents of the signatory and the partners, and a plain description of the business that answers the questions the bank’s onboarding team asks.
• The application itself, submitted with the client in the Wio Business app and tracked by the bank as one of ours, so that we can follow it.
• Direct follow-up with the bank’s business onboarding team: where the application stands, what is missing, and what has been asked of the client.
• Same-day answers to the bank’s requests for information, drafted by us and sent by the client.
• After approval: the plan choice, the first deposit, the cards, the currency accounts, payroll registration and the accounting link.

We charge nothing for the account at any stage: assistance with opening a Wio Business account is free of charge to our clients, and we have made it a rule rather than an offer. Our fees for incorporation, visas, registered office and advisory work are unchanged and are quoted separately. Existing clients who want a Wio account added to a company we already administer get the same service on the same terms.

Why Wio

Wio Bank PJSC is a national bank incorporated in Abu Dhabi on 23 February 2022 and licensed by the Central Bank of the UAE as a commercial bank; it launched Wio Business in September 2022. Its shareholders at 31 December 2025 were Alpha Dhabi (33.15 per cent), ADQ (31.85 per cent), e& (25 per cent) and First Abu Dhabi Bank (10 per cent). It closed 2025 with a profit after tax of AED 621.7 million, customer deposits of AED 57.3 billion and total assets of AED 61.1 billion; at 30 June 2026 its consolidated assets stood at AED 68.8 billion and its common equity tier-one ratio at 15.58 per cent. It passed AED 50 billion in deposits in September 2025, three years after launch.

Wio Business is a fully digital account, opened and run from the app and the web: an AED current account with a cheque book and a debit card, accounts in USD, EUR and GBP, virtual cards, bulk payments and salary files under the Wage Protection System, invoicing with payment links, and links to Zoho, Wafeq, Fiskl and Xero. There is no account-opening fee and no minimum balance. The Essential plan costs AED 99 a month and the Grow plan AED 249, the first month is free on both, and the bank publishes a single schedule of fees. Wio’s own description of the process is an application in minutes and an account “up and running in 3 working days”.

That combination — a regulated bank with a sovereign shareholder base, a product built for small companies, and a timetable measured in days — is why Wio is the first account we open for a new company, and the account we hold ourselves. Our full assessment of the bank, including what it deliberately does not do, is in our Wio Bank guide, linked at the foot of this page.

Wio Bank PJSC, Abu Dhabi. Licensed and regulated by the Central Bank of the UAE.

A direct line to the bank

What has changed this month is not the bank or the product. It is the way our clients’ applications are handled. The bank’s business onboarding team knows the applications we prepare, and we have a direct channel to it through which we can check where an application stands and what it needs, once the bank has had its first working days with it. We know what its team needs to see in a file; its team knows how we prepare one.

In practice this removes the part of account opening that costs clients the most time: the silence. A new company’s owner, often outside the UAE, waits for an email from a bank, misses it, or answers it incompletely, and the application ages. With the channel we now have, we see the request, we draft the answer, and the client sends it the same day. If nothing has moved, we ask why, in the bank’s own language, and we get a reason rather than a ticket number.

Two limits, stated plainly. We are not the bank’s agent or representative, and we do not decide applications; Wio’s Standard Terms say that it “may, without reason, refuse to provide a Service”, and that is the law of every bank account in the country. And we do not describe the product in any terms other than the bank’s own: what the account does and what it costs comes from Wio’s published Key Facts Statement and Schedule of Fees, linked at the end.

Our commitment

Clarity of information is the condition, and it is the one thing we control together with the client. Our companion article explains what the bank looks at in a file and how we prepare it so that the first answer is yes.

Who qualifies

• Companies: any UAE-licensed company, mainland or free zone, with a valid trade licence. Wio publishes no list of supported free zones; it has announced onboarding arrangements with RAKEZ, IFZA, Meydan Free Zone, ADGM, Ajman NuVentures Centre and the DWTC Free Zone, and with Abu Dhabi’s TAMM platform, but its stated test is a valid licence, a physical address and a resident signatory.
• Freelancers: holders of a freelance permit, on the Essential plan the bank describes as best for freelancers and small businesses.
• The signatory: the person who operates the account must hold a valid UAE residence visa and Emirates ID; an Emirates ID still in process is not enough. For a new company whose owner lives abroad, the account therefore follows the visa, and we sequence the licence, the establishment card, the visa and the Emirates ID so that the bank application goes in the day the card is issued; alternatively a UAE-resident manager can be appointed as signatory.
• Not covered: offshore companies such as RAK ICC and JAFZA Offshore, which have no UAE trade licence in the bank’s sense; for those we go to the banks that take them. Activities the bank regards as high risk are decided case by case, and we say so before the licence is applied for.

Where Wio sits in a company’s banking

Wio is the operating account: the one that opens first, pays salaries and suppliers, receives client payments and runs the cards. It is not the only account a company should have. Our standing advice is two banks in two different groups, both active, both holding the same file, so that a change in one bank’s appetite does not stop the business. Wio’s limits are also real: cash and cheque deposits go through First Abu Dhabi Bank’s machines, the cheque book is in dirhams only, and trade finance is not its business. Our Wio guide sets out what the bank does not do, and our RAKBANK and Emirates NBD guides describe the second account.

Note — Polaris Corporate Services FZ-LLC is an independent, licensed corporate service provider. It is not an agent or representative of Wio Bank PJSC, it does not decide applications and it charges no fee for assisting with a Wio Business account. Products, eligibility and pricing are as published by the bank in its Key Facts Statement, Standard Terms and Schedule of Fees, and account opening is at the bank’s discretion.