About Rain

Joseph Dallago, AJ Nelson, and Yehia Badawy started Rain in 2017 and spent the next two years inside the Bahraini central bank's regulatory sandbox, emerging in 2019 with the region's first crypto license. Where global exchanges served the Gulf first and sought approval later, Rain was built from the license outward.

After a $2.5 million seed round led by BitMEX Ventures, Rain closed a $110 million Series B co-led by Paradigm and Kleiner Perkins, with Coinbase Ventures among earlier investors.

The company reports over 2 million customers and more than $11 billion in cumulative volume, up from roughly half a billion dollars at the end of 2023. It has also begun buying reach, acquiring Saudi financial media group Digital Ma'arefa, publisher of The Finance Memo and Crypto Memo, in May 2026.

Rain Features

Rain is a brokerage first and an exchange second, so the product list is deliberately short. Everything sits in one account across the web platform and the mobile app, which was rebuilt from the ground up in mid-2026.

1. Buy, sell, and swap: Instant purchases and sales against eight fiat currencies, plus direct crypto-to-crypto swaps with the conversion quote shown before confirmation. Rain's UAE services guide lists more than 150 assets, led by BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, and USDT, though the exact menu narrows in some countries.
2. Rain Pro: A separate order-book interface with live charts, technical indicators, and market and limit orders. Pricing on Pro works on a maker-taker model rather than the brokerage spread, which changes the cost picture entirely.
3. OTC desk: Large trades settle privately at negotiated pricing through a dedicated desk aimed at institutions and high-net-worth clients, a category we size up across the market in our best crypto OTC brokers guide.
4. Custody: Rain holds a custody permission alongside its brokerage one, keeping the bulk of client assets in offline cold storage with multi-factor authentication on every account.
5. Shariah-compliant trading: The Shariyah Review Bureau has certified Rain's brokerage, trading, and custody services as compliant with Sharia principles, a certification few exchanges anywhere can match.
6. Localization: The platform, app, and 24/7 support run in Arabic, English, and Turkish, and a VIP program reduces costs for high-volume accounts.

There are no derivatives, staking, or earn products on the retail platform today, although the pending Dubai approval covers margin trading, so leverage is likely to arrive there first.

Tokenized Stocks on Rain

Rain's most significant product launch in years is equities. Through a partnership with Kraken, eligible Bahrain customers can trade tokenized shares of companies such as Tesla, Apple, and Nvidia around the clock, in fractional amounts, under the oversight of the CBB.

The products run on xStocks, the framework operated by Kraken parent Payward, in which each token is backed one-to-one by the real share held with a licensed custodian. Holders get price exposure and dividend value reflected in their token balance, but no shareholder rights such as voting, and access is restricted to eligible customers with the US excluded entirely.

For a Gulf investor, the appeal is a single regulated account holding both crypto and US equity exposure without a foreign brokerage. Anyone comparing venues for this product class can read our best tokenized stock trading exchanges breakdown, which covers how these tokens differ from owning the actual shares.

Funding a Rain Account

Moving local money in and out is the reason Rain exists, and it is the part the platform does best. Identity verification is mandatory before anything else, and our document check cleared in under a day.

• BenefitPay in Bahrain: Since May 2026, Rain has been the first Bahraini crypto platform with in-app BenefitPay checkout, letting customers buy crypto instantly through the national payment network's CBB-licensed member banks, around the clock on any day of the year.
• Bahrain bank transfers: BHD deposits arrive through the domestic Fawri and Fawri+ systems. A Fawri+ transfer we sent was credited within minutes, though that channel caps at BHD 1,000 per day, while standard Fawri handles larger amounts with slower settlement.
• UAE bank transfers: AED deposits move as domestic transfers from a bank account in your own name, including from major banks such as Emirates NBD, and local AED withdrawals carry no bank charges.
• Other supported currencies: SAR, KWD, OMR, and QAR transfers serve residents of those countries, alongside TRY in Turkiye and USD for customers who prefer a dollar balance.
• Card purchases: Visa and Mastercard purchases execute instantly at the same quoted price as a balance-funded trade, with the full cost displayed before confirmation. The card must be registered in your own name, and Rain warns that using someone else's can close the account.
• Deposit and withdrawal fees: Rain charges nothing on deposits and nothing on local withdrawals in Bahrain and the UAE. International withdrawals carry fixed bank charges of SAR 50, KWD 5, AED 50, OMR 5, or USD 15 depending on the currency.

Crypto deposits and withdrawals work for supported assets, with a dynamic network fee on each send that is quoted before you confirm.

Rain Fees Explained

Rain runs two pricing systems side by side, and the gap between them is the most useful thing to know before trading here.

• Brokerage trades: Every buy, sell, or swap on the standard interface is priced as the source rate plus a 0.5% fee. The confirmation screen shows the final execution price, so there are no surprises, but 0.5% per side is expensive by global standards.
• Rain Pro: The order book charges 0% maker and 0.05% taker with no additions. That taker rate undercuts the base tiers at Binance, Bybit, and Kraken, and a resting limit order costs nothing at all.
• The practical takeaway: A market buy on the simple interface costs ten times the same trade executed as a taker order on Pro. Anyone trading more than trivial size should learn the Pro interface, and our maker vs taker fees explainer covers how the two order types are charged.
• Holding costs: There are no custody or account fees, so assets can sit in the wallet indefinitely at no charge.

When we compared Rain's quoted brokerage price against the live mid-market rate, the 0.5% fee was the visible cost, and pricing complaints from users tend to concern this spread rather than hidden charges.

Is Rain Regulated?

Regulation is Rain's core identity, and its current position is the strongest in company history. Each approval belongs to a separate legal entity, so the firm you contract with depends on your country.

• Bahrain: Rain Management W.L.L. carries a Category 3 crypto-asset services license issued by Bahrain's central bank, the CBB, the first of its kind anywhere in the Middle East, spanning brokerage, trading, and custody.
• Abu Dhabi: Rain Trading Limited received a full Financial Services Permission from ADGM's Financial Services Regulatory Authority in July 2023, authorizing virtual asset brokerage and custody with a direct AED on-ramp for UAE clients.
• Dubai: Rain MENA FZE secured an in-principle approval from VARA in May 2026. Once operational, it permits exchange services, broker-dealer activity, and crypto margin trading, completing the full set of GCC crypto approvals.
• Turkey: Rain is registered with financial intelligence unit MASAK and states it is among six firms shortlisted by the Capital Markets Board for a full local license, while continuing to serve Turkish customers in TRY.

Coverage stops at those borders. Rain is not available in the US, Europe, or most of Asia, and residents of served countries should confirm which entity holds their account, since regulatory protections differ between Bahrain, the ADGM, and Dubai.

Is Rain Safe?

Rain's security record now has a before and an after. Client assets sit mostly in offline cold storage under a licensed custody structure, accounts require identity verification and multi-factor authentication, and the Shariyah Review Bureau has certified the brokerage and custody services as Sharia compliant, a meaningful assurance for faith-conscious investors in its home markets.

The after is April 2024. On April 29 of that year, roughly $14.8 million left wallets the company controlled, spanning Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, and XRP holdings. The company said nothing publicly for two weeks until investigator ZachXBT traced the outflows, after which Rain confirmed the incident, said customer funds were protected, and absorbed the loss from company money.

Covering the full loss without customer impact is what a well-capitalized, regulated firm should do, and no repeat incident has surfaced since. Staying silent until an outside researcher forced the disclosure is a transparency failure that a licensed custodian should not repeat.

Rain User Reviews

Feedback on Rain follows the pattern we see across regulated brokers, with strong app-store scores and a harsh complaint-site picture, though the sample sizes here are smaller than for global exchanges.

Here is how sentiment reads across the major platforms:

• Trustpilot: The rain.bh listing scores roughly 1.8/5 across about 200 reviews. Recurring complaints cover reversed bank deposits, slow recovery of those funds, spread costs on the brokerage interface, and templated support replies. The listing also catches reviews meant for an unrelated South African mobile network of the same name, so treat the score with care.
• Google Play: The Android app holds 4.4/5 from around 7,900 reviews and 500,000+ downloads. Praise centers on simplicity and local currency support, while the sharpest criticism targets login loops, document upload failures during verification, and brokerage pricing on small altcoin trades.
• Apple App Store: The iOS app rates 4.6/5 from about 1,400 ratings on the UAE storefront. Reviewers highlight the clean design and responsive OTC team, with verification delays the most common frustration.

Day-to-day buying and selling satisfies most customers, while the friction concentrates in onboarding and in bank transfer edge cases. The recent app rebuild appears aimed squarely at the first problem.

Final Thoughts

Rain in 2026 is the most credentialed crypto platform in the Gulf. No competitor holds the CBB license, the ADGM permission, and a VARA approval at once, and for a saver in Manama or Abu Dhabi moving dinars or dirhams into Bitcoin through a locally supervised firm, that combination is the entire value proposition.

The trade-offs are equally clear. The 0.5% brokerage fee punishes anyone who never opens Rain Pro, the asset list is a fraction of what global venues carry, and the delayed disclosure of the 2024 hack left a mark on an otherwise strong compliance story.

To see how Rain stacks up against the platforms competing for the same customers, read our guides to the best crypto exchanges in the UAE and the best crypto exchanges in Bahrain.