Keeta and ASK Group launch ambitious blockchain partnership to transform cross-border payments and commodity markets in the Gulf

Keeta, a Layer 1 blockchain company, has announced a joint venture with ASK Group, a UAE-based investment and operating group led by His Highness Sheikh Ahmed bin Sultan bin Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan. 

The partnership aims to modernise cross-border value exchange in the Middle East and beyond, while pioneering the tokenisation of physical Gulf commodities on a public exchange accessible to global investors for the first time.

His Highness Sheikh Ahmed bin Sultan bin Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan said, “As a global financial centre, the UAE is determined to lead the world as we enter this new era. This partnership is a long-term commitment to building the infrastructure that will define how trillions of dollars in real-world assets move.” 

Ty Schenk, Founder and Chief Executive of Keeta, added, “Together we are going to take assets and payment flows that have operated the same way for decades and put them on rails built for the next century.” 

A landmark blockchain initiative in the Gulf region

This partnership is one of the most significant blockchain infrastructure initiatives to emerge from the Gulf, combining sovereign institutional backing with technology stress-tested at a scale comparable to the world’s largest payment networks. 

Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google and prominent technology investor, is a major investor in Keeta. The company’s network was developed in collaboration with Google’s Spanner engineering team, achieving an unprecedented 11.2 million transactions per second with 400-millisecond settlement finality. 

This proven performance has attracted considerable attention from institutional investors and fintech firms worldwide.

The UAE: A hub for innovation

The UAE has developed one of the world’s most sophisticated regulatory environments for digital assets. Institutions such as the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) in Dubai, the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) in Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), and the federal Capital Markets Authority provide regulatory clarity and credibility that attract institutional capital, global banks, and technology firms.

This regulatory framework, combined with the UAE’s strategic location at the crossroads of major trade and remittance corridors connecting South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, makes it the ideal base for the Keeta-ASK partnership.

Revolutionising cross-border remittance in the UAE

The UAE hosts one of the world’s most internationally diverse populations, with millions sending remittances to families across South Asia, Africa, Southeast Asia, and other regions. 

The UAE-India corridor alone handles around $20 billion per year, while corridors to the Philippines, Pakistan, and Kenya add tens of billions more.

These remittances are among the most economically significant value transfers globally, supporting families, education, and communities in developing economies. 

The senders require infrastructure that is fast, transparent, and affordable.

Keeta’s settlement network meets these needs with its anchor model, allowing licensed financial institutions to link their systems to Keeta’s network and become registered settlement participants.

This model enables cross-border transfers that previously required multiple intermediaries and significant time to settle in under 400 milliseconds.

A typical transaction involves a sender in Dubai initiating a transfer, the UAE anchor processing the transaction onto Keeta’s network, and the receiving anchor in India, the Philippines, or Kenya delivering local currency to the recipient, all within a second.

Keeta’s anchor model enables banks, exchange houses, payment companies, and remittance providers to connect through a single SDK.

This allows them to access all corridors on the network without the need for multiple bilateral relationships.

This presents significant operational and commercial opportunities, especially for the UAE’s established exchange house sector.

This presents significant operational and commercial opportunities, especially for the UAE’s established exchange house sector.

Opening Gulf commodity markets to global investors

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region holds vast physical commodity wealth, including oil, gold, silver, copper, and various industrial metals with global significance. 

Direct investment in physical assets has traditionally been restricted to producers, sovereign institutions, and large traders. 

Although futures markets and ETFs offer indirect access, most investors still can not directly invest in these assets.

The Keeta-ASK joint venture aims to change this by establishing, by 2027, a Keeta-powered public exchange where physical Gulf commodities are tokenised as digital assets. 

Each token will be backed one-to-one by assets held in audited physical custody, with on-chain proof of reserves verifiable in real time by any network participant.

This will enable direct fractional ownership of physical Gulf commodities, accessible globally, settling in under a second, 24/7. 

Retail investors in Tokyo, institutional funds in London, or family offices in Singapore will gain the same transparent and direct access to Gulf crude oil or UAE-held gold as large commodity trading houses have historically enjoyed.

The potential market scale is substantial. Global commodity markets move trillions annually, and the GCC’s proven oil reserves alone represent an asset base whose tokenisation would be among the largest migrations of real-world value onto blockchain infrastructure in history.

Cutting-edge technology driving the partnership

Keeta’s Layer 1 blockchain is designed for the needs of institutional financial markets, offering high transaction capacity and quick settlement times, setting it apart from other blockchain platforms.

The network supports not only human-initiated transactions but also the increasing volume of machine-speed financial activity generated by algorithmic systems and autonomous AI agents.

A native compliance architecture allows token issuers to embed regulatory conditions—such as transfer restrictions, investor accreditation, and jurisdictional controls—directly into tokens at creation. 

These conditions are automatically applied to every transaction, eliminating the need for separate processes or third-party intermediaries. 

This is crucial for commodity markets and cross-border transactions that involve complex regulations across multiple jurisdictions.

Keeta’s digital identity framework verifies participants once and enables credential use across all products and markets. 

This process reduces repeated onboarding, reducing costs and friction. Frequent remittance users benefit from a single verified identity for all transactions.

Future phases of the partnership will expand across additional remittance corridors, commodity categories, and GCC markets.