Licensable activity
E-commerce
Selling goods or services through a website, marketplace or application. Most authorities now issue a named e-commerce activity rather than treating it as ordinary retail, and several — Meydan, IFZA, DMCC, SPC — have built packages specifically around it.
Classification
How it is coded.
UAE activity lists derive from ISIC Revision 4, the United Nations industrial classification. Each emirate's economic department and each free zone then extends that base with its own numbering, so the same activity carries a different code in Dubai than it does in Sharjah or inside DMCC.
- ISIC Rev. 4
- Section G — division 47.91, retail sale via mail order houses or via the internet
- Licence category
- Commercial (e-commerce)
- Regulator
- No sector regulator — the licensing authority is the only approval, unless a specific product or premises triggers one.
Approvals beyond the licence
- Payment processing
- Not a licensing approval, but your acquiring bank or payment service provider will run its own onboarding, and it is usually the slower gate.
- Food delivery
- Municipality food safety approval, and in most emirates a physical kitchen or storage facility.
- Regulated goods online
- Whatever approval the underlying product needs — selling it through a website changes nothing.
In practice
E-commerce is one of the few activities where a virtual office is genuinely adequate, because the operation has no public premises. Dubai also runs a Trader Licence for home-based businesses, though eligibility for it is narrower than the marketing suggests.
Coverage
Where it can be licensed.
Of the 40 licensing authorities across the UAE, 12 issue licences covering this activity, spread across 6 of the seven emirates.