Dubai’s Department of Finance announced a partnership with crypto platform Crypto.com that will allow government service fees to be paid with cryptocurrencies.

The memorandum of understanding between Dubai government officials and Mohammed Al Hakim, president of Crypto.com UAE, was signed Monday on the sidelines of the Dubai FinTech Summit.

Government officials said in a press release that the partnership will help achieve the “Dubai Cashless Strategy,” which seeks to solidify Dubai’s status as a leading digital city. The strategy aims to reach 90% cashless transactions across Dubai’s public and private sectors by 2026.

Once technical arrangements for the initiative are finalized, individuals and “businesses customers of government entities” will be able to pay service fees through digital wallets on Crypto.com.  

“The platform will securely convert these payments into Emirati dirhams and transfer them to Dubai Finance accounts, ensuring a streamlined, secure, and innovative payment framework,” Dubai Finance added. 

Crypto.com’s Al Hakim called the initiative a “truly global first programme.” However, the announcement did not clarify what types of digital currencies the department of finance would accept, or for which types of government fees covered by the agreement. 

Crypto.com and Dubai Finance did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC. 

Crypto.com first received a license for its Dubai entity to offer regulated virtual asset service activities in 2023. Last month, the company said Dubai’s virtual asset regulatory body had also issued a limited license to offer derivatives.

Dubai has been betting on the crypto industry for years as part of its ambition to become a global tech hub. 

Softbank‘s Vision Fund business on Tuesday posted a loss in the fiscal year ended March as it booked slowing gains at its massive tech investment arm.

SoftBank said it notched a gain on investment at its Vision Funds of 434.9 billion yen in the fiscal year, a 40% fall from the 724.3 billion yen booked in the previous year.

In its fiscal fourth quarter — the three months ended March — SoftBank’s Vision Funds segment recorded a 26.1 billion yen gain, helped by a rise in the value of TikTok owner ByteDance.

The Vision Fund segment overall logged a pretax loss of 115.02 billion yen ($777.7 mllion) versus a profit of 128.2 billion yen in the previous fiscal year.

For the latest fiscal year, SoftBank saw gains on its investments in Chinese ridehailing company Didi as well as South Korean e-commerce firm Coupang. However, the performance of its investment arm was hurt by a drop in value of companies including AutoStore.

The Vision Funds are a key focus for investors who are looking for signs of improvement at SoftBank’s huge investment arm, after it swung to a surprise loss in the company’s fiscal third quarter.

SoftBank’s investment division can be inconsistent, as it is driven by changes in public and private financial markets.

SoftBank’s stock is down about 17% this year as volatility in financial markets and concerns about the macroeconomic environment continues to weigh on the company.

SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son has sought to position company as a key player in artificial intelligence through various investments and acquisitions. The firm owns the majority of semiconductor designer Arm and announced plans this year to acquire server chip designer Ampere Computing for $6.5 billion. Ampere’s semiconductors are designed to run AI applications.

One of SoftBank’s biggest AI bets has been on OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. SoftBank invested $30 billion in OpenAI as part of a broader $40 billion financing round in March that valued the startup at $300 billion.

Softbank is also involved in Stargate, a joint venture that was unveiled by U.S. President Donald Trump in January, calling for hundreds of billions of dollars of investment into AI infrastructure.

There are still questions about how SoftBank plans to finance these ventures and whether it will need to sell down some of its holdings in companies like Arm.

Citing people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg had on Monday reported that dozens of financial players are reassessing investment in data centers due to growing economic volatility, and SoftBank has yet to come up with a financing template for Stargate.

Yoshimitsu Goto, chief finance officer at SoftBank, said during a Tuesday press conference that media reports of banks hesitating to fund SoftBank’s efforts are not true.

“We are very much making progress,” Goto said.

He added there are around 100 proposals being made for sites to build data centers as part of Stargate, with the first facilities likely to be in Texas.

While the Vision Fund was an overall drag on profit, it was a big gain in SoftBank’s older investments in Alibaba, T-Mobile and Deutsche Telekom, that helped drive its overall profit.

Arm and SoftBank’s telecommunications business also contributed positively to the group’s overall profitability.

Financial technology firms were initially the biggest losers of interest rate hikes by global central banks in 2022, which led to tumbling valuations.

With time though, this change in the interest rate environment steadily boosted profits for fintechs. This is because higher rates boost what’s called net interest income — or the difference between the rates charged for loans and the interest paid out to savers.

In 2024, several fintechs — including Robinhood, Revolut and Monzo — saw a boost to their bottom lines as a result. Robinhood reported $1.4 billion in annual profit, boosted by a 19% jump in net interest income year-over-year, to $1.1 billion.

Revolut also saw a 58% jump in net interest income last year, which helped lift profits to £1.1 billion ($1.45 billion). Monzo, meanwhile, reported its first annual profit in the year ending March 31, 2024, buoyed by a 167% increase in net interest income.

Now, fintechs — and especially digital banks — face a key test as a broad decline in interest rates raises doubts about the sustainability of relying on this heightened income over the long term.

“An environment of falling interest rates may pose challenges for some fintech players with business models anchored to net interest income,” Lindsey Naylor, partner and head of U.K. financial services at Bain & Company, told CNBC via email.

Falling benchmark interest rates could be “a test of the resilience of fintech firms’ business models,” Naylor added.

“Lower rates may expose vulnerabilities in some fintechs — but they may also highlight the adaptability and durability of others with broader income strategies.”

It’s unclear how significant an impact falling interest rates will have on the sector overall. In the first quarter of 2025, Robinhood reported $290 million of net interest revenues, up 14% year-over-year.

However, in the U.K., results from payments infrastructure startup ClearBank hinted at the impact of lower rates. ClearBank swung to a pre-tax loss of £4.4 million last year on the back of a shift from interest income toward fee-based income, as well as expenditure related to its expansion in the European Union.

“Our interest income will always be an important part of our income, but our strategic focus is on growing the fee income line,” Mark Fairless, CEO of ClearBank, told CNBC in an interview last month. “We factor in the declining rates in our planning and so we’re expecting those rates to come down.”