Question

Is general trading a licence or an activity?

VelarozoneAdvisory desk26 August 2026

The short answer

In most registers it is both, which is exactly why the term causes trouble. Several authorities publish General Trading as a licence family in its own right, and inside that family the register typically holds a single entry rather than a list; the point of the family is breadth, not enumeration. So a general trading licence is not a licence that lets you do anything. It is a licence whose one activity is defined broadly enough to cover trading in goods generally, subject to the authority's own exclusions, and with anything regulated still requiring its regulator. It does not reach services, it does not reach manufacturing, and it removes no external approval.

What the registers actually show

In both the Ajman Free Zone and RAKEZ registers, General Trading appears as a licence family with exactly one activity entry. Beside it, the Commercial family carries hundreds of separate entries, and RAKEZ's Industrial family carries more than a thousand.

That single entry is the tell. Where a family enumerates, the authority is drawing lines between kinds of goods and kinds of work. Where a family holds one broad entry, the authority has priced and permitted breadth deliberately, and the breadth is bounded by its own published exclusions rather than by the list.

What it does not cover

Services and professional work. Those sit in service, professional or consultancy families, and a trading licence does not reach them.
Manufacturing, processing and assembly, which sit in industrial families and usually bring premises and environmental clearance with them.
Goods classes an authority has carved out and reserved to dedicated activities. Military goods, for example, are recorded in our registers against defence and procurement approval, however broad the trading licence is.
Any regulated activity. Breadth across goods is not a substitute for a regulator's approval. RAKEZ names cars, alcohol and medical products as goods that need a specific licence to import or export.

Why it is bought, and where it disappoints

It is bought for optionality: a founder who does not yet know what they will trade wants a licence that will not need amending. That is a real and often sensible motivation.

It disappoints when the counterparties turn out to read the specific wording rather than the family name. Banks assess whether the flows match the activity. Customs and logistics chains care about the goods. A licence that is broad in the register can still be the wrong licence for the one thing you actually end up selling, particularly if that thing was regulated all along.

Where this stops

Whether breadth is worth what it costs you in fee, in workspace tier and in how a bank reads the file depends on what you will really be moving, from where, to whom, and how soon. That is a commercial judgement about your plan, not a lookup in a register. Tell us what the first three shipments or contracts look like and we will tell you whether the broad family earns its place or whether two named entries serve you better.

Questions that come up next

Sources

Where this comes from

Velarozone licence catalogue: licence families and per-family activity counts in the parsed Ajman Free Zone and RAKEZ registers
Each licensing authority's own published activity list

General information drawn from the CBUAE Rulebook, including the Retail Payment Services and Card Schemes Regulation (C 15/2021), and Cabinet Resolution No. (134) of 2025 as published, not legal or tax advice. Rules and guidance change, so confirm the current text and each institution's own requirements before you submit.