Living in the UAE, you'll move money between bank accounts constantly — shifting your own savings to an account at another bank, splitting rent with a flatmate, paying a landlord who banks elsewhere. Most of the time it's quick and cheap. How quick, and how cheap, comes down to one thing: whether both accounts sit at the same bank or at two different ones. Here's how to transfer money between banks in the UAE — the routes, what each costs, and the small slip-ups behind most of the delays.
Same bank vs. a different bank
It all hinges on one question: does the money stay inside a single bank, or cross to another?
- Same-bank transfers are the easy case. If you and the recipient both bank with Emirates NBD, ADCB or FAB, the money never actually leaves the bank's own system — so it's instant, free, and available any hour of the day. When that's on the table, it's always your best option.
- A different bank is where timing starts to matter. Send from ADCB to Mashreq, say, and the money has to cross the country's shared clearing rails; how long that takes depends on which of them carries it.
The UAE's two transfer systems: UAEFTS and Aani
Two systems carry these local interbank transfers, both run under the UAE Central Bank.
- UAEFTS — the UAE Funds Transfer System — is the workhorse. It moves money from one bank's IBAN to another's, settling on working days, usually within a couple of hours. Send it after the daily cut-off or over the weekend, though, and it waits in line for the next working day.
- Aani is the newer one, live since 2023, and it's properly instant: money lands in seconds, any time, weekends included, often from nothing more than a registered mobile number. One thing worth knowing before you assume it handles everything — it's built for everyday sums. Transfers are capped at 50,000 AED each across the platform, and some banks set the ceiling lower still (Emirates NBD, for now, at 5,000 AED).
If your app shows an "instant" or "Aani" option, take it; otherwise a plain local transfer rides UAEFTS.
How to transfer money between banks in the UAE, step by step
- Open your banking app and choose "Local transfer" (or "Send via Aani" for an instant one).
- Add the recipient as a beneficiary: their full name and 23-character IBAN (it starts with AE), or their Aani-registered mobile number.
- Enter the amount and, if asked, a short purpose — most banks require one.
- Check the name matches the account, review any fee shown, and send. Keep the reference number until the recipient confirms it arrived.
Costs, cut-off times, and common mistakes
Same-bank transfers are free. A local interbank transfer through the app is free, or costs a few dirhams; some banks charge more at a branch or by phone. (International transfers are a different story and cost far more — see below.)
A few things trip people up. A wrong IBAN — even one digit off — will bounce the transfer or send it to the wrong account, so paste it rather than type it. Cut-off times matter for UAEFTS: send late and it processes the next morning. And the UAE weekend is now Saturday–Sunday, so a Friday-evening UAEFTS transfer may not clear until Monday. Aani sidesteps all of that by running around the clock.