Abu Dhabi Launches the Gulf’s First Digital Skills Card: Employers Verify Accredited Qualifications by QR Code on the ADI Chain Blockchain Without Paper Certificates

2026-09-07

On Monday 7 September 2026 the Abu Dhabi Quality and Conformity Council (QCC), in partnership with Union Assessment and Quality Accreditation (UAC), launched the Digital Skills Card, the first digitally verifiable record of professional skills and qualifications in the Gulf region. Each card is linked to a certificate awarded under personnel conformity programmes that QCC accredits and UAC delivers. An employer, a regulator or any other party scans the QR code on the card and sees whether the certificate is valid and authentic; the check runs on ADI Chain, the regulation-compliant blockchain operated by the Abu Dhabi based ADI Foundation, so no paper certificate, stamp or written enquiry to the issuer is needed. The first cards were handed to certified professionals at the launch ceremony in Abu Dhabi. UAC intends to extend the card over time to further certifications, qualifications and professional achievements. The number of cards issued, the list of occupations covered at launch, fees and the validity period were not published as of 7 September 2026.

The Digital Skills Card at a glance

What the card is and what a QR scan shows

The Digital Skills Card is not a new qualification. It is a digital carrier for a certificate that already exists in Abu Dhabi’s quality system: the certificate of conformity for personnel. On QCC’s own definition, such a certificate is “granted for personals’ services after passing the required examination and fulfilling the requirement of the conformity schemes”, and it “indicates that the person who holds this certificate fulfills the relevant professional standards approved by the regulatory bodies in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi to practice the profession or craft”. The card takes that certificate and attaches a QR code to it.

Verification is the point of the exercise. According to the launch announcements, employers, regulators and other stakeholders scan the QR code to confirm whether the certification is valid and authentic, and the confirmation comes from ADI Chain rather than from a phone call or an e-mail to the issuing body. When ADI Foundation announced the project on 19 December 2025, it described the mechanics in three lines: workers own verified, tamper-proof skill cards; employers and regulators verify competencies instantly; every credential action is recorded permanently. The foundation called it the first large-scale initiative of verifiable, on-chain workforce credentials in the GCC.

What the announcements do not say is equally useful to know before an HR team builds a process around the card. They do not specify which data fields the scan displays, whether the card lives in a dedicated app or a digital wallet, whether it can be linked to UAE Pass, or whether employers will be obliged to use it. QCC said it will keep working with government entities, regulators, employers and industry stakeholders to expand digital credential solutions across Abu Dhabi, so the scope is likely to be defined in stages.

Who stands behind it: QCC and UAC

QCC is an Abu Dhabi government entity established under Local Law No. 3 of 2009. It runs the emirate’s quality infrastructure: standardisation, conformity assessment, testing, inspection and accreditation, with conformity schemes for products, services and people. Personnel conformity certificates have been issued online since 27 December 2022, when QCC moved the Personnel Conformity Certificate and the Certificate of Conformity for Individual Services onto its Jawdah system as a single four-step portal. The personnel schemes listed on QCC’s website cover electrical professions, the public health sector, protection services, school transport, waste management and the cleaning of drinking-water tanks.

UAC is the assessment body that delivers those programmes. On 26 July 2023 QCC and UAC, then operating as Union Assessment and Certification, signed a delegation agreement under which UAC receives applications, runs assessments, issues results and submits certificate requests for 72 occupations across 13 sectors, including car workshops, construction, food, public health and oil and gas, with assessments delivered in Arabic, English, Urdu and Hindi. The agreement was signed by Dr Helal Hamed Al Kaabi, Secretary-General of QCC, and Abdulla Rashed Mohammed Rashed Al Rashdi, Chairman of UAC. The Digital Skills Card is the digital layer on top of that certification base.

“Digitalization is no longer merely a means of streamlining procedures; it has become a fundamental pillar for building more connected and transparent systems, grounded in trusted data,” said Badr Khamis Al Shumaili, Executive Director of the Conformity and Standards Services Sector at QCC, at the launch. “The launch of the Digital Skills Card is a practical step in support of this direction. It provides a secure and reliable digital means of verifying professional skills and credentials, and reinforces confidence in accredited competencies in a way that serves regulators, employers and professionals alike.” Shahbaz Muhammad Khan, Director and Chief Executive Officer of UAC, put the emphasis on portability: “Verified skills can travel with the individual, be recognised across institutions and borders, and retain their value wherever a professional’s career may take them.”

The technology: ADI Chain and ADI Foundation

The verification layer is supplied by ADI Foundation, headquartered in Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) and founded by Sirius International Holding, the technology arm of International Holding Company (IHC). ADI Chain’s mainnet went live on 9 December 2025 after a testnet phase that began in August 2025. The foundation describes it as the first institutional-grade layer-2 blockchain in the Middle East and North Africa, built for governments, regulated institutions and real-world systems, and reports partnerships with more than 50 institutions in over 20 countries. Its flagship project is the dirham-backed stablecoin being developed by First Abu Dhabi Bank and IHC within the UAE regulatory framework. Ten days after the mainnet launch, on 19 December 2025, ADI Foundation announced that it would build the Digital Skills Card system together with QCC and UAC; the September 2026 launch delivers that announcement.

For UAE business readers the choice of a blockchain is less exotic than it sounds. The country’s regulated financial sector has been moving records onto distributed ledgers for some time: First Abu Dhabi Bank completed live US dollar transactions with tokenised deposits in early September 2026, and DMCC and VARA in Dubai tokenised the world’s largest silver bar in the same week. A workforce credential on a regulation-compliant chain follows the same logic: the record is written once, cannot be altered by the holder, and can be checked by anyone who has the QR code.

Where it fits: the UAE’s shift to verifiable documents

The card arrives in a system that already verifies paperwork digitally at several points of the employment chain. Since August 2026 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs attests UAE-issued educational documents fully online within two hours, provided the document carries a QR code, barcode or reference number. In May 2025 the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation (MoHRE) and the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research opened a service through which private employers verify the authenticity of academic qualifications, issued inside or outside the UAE, for workers in skill levels 1 to 4. UAE Pass is the mandatory login for Dubai customs declarations, and MoHRE’s worker protection schemes have paid out more than AED 832 million through digital claims. The Digital Skills Card covers a different layer: vocational and technical competencies assessed in Abu Dhabi under QCC schemes, rather than school and university certificates.

What it means for employers and professionals in the UAE

For an Abu Dhabi employer in a regulated trade, the practical change is in onboarding and inspections. Where a regulator requires staff to hold a personnel conformity certificate, the employer no longer needs to keep paper copies and confirm each one with the issuer; a scan of the QR code on the worker’s card returns the validity status directly, and the same scan serves an inspector on site. The requirement to hold the certificate does not change. It is still set by the relevant Abu Dhabi regulator, and the card only proves that the certificate is genuine and in force.

For a foreign professional, the credential is attached to the person rather than to the employer. It stays with the worker at a job change, and UAC’s stated aim is recognition across institutions and borders. The immigration side of a job change is unaffected: a new employer still needs a work permit and residence visa for the employee under the usual MoHRE or free zone procedure, and the skills card does not replace them.

For recruitment companies and contractors who bring workers from abroad, the assessment languages matter as much as the technology. The QCC and UAC programme assesses in Arabic, English, Urdu and Hindi, which reflects the source markets for the construction, automotive, food and oil and gas trades. A worker who passes the assessment in Abu Dhabi receives a certificate that any future employer in the emirate can verify in seconds, which removes the re-checking of qualifications at every job change.

Companies hiring at scale can now combine three verification tools: MoFA attestation for UAE-issued school and university documents, the MoHRE academic verification service for degrees from abroad, and the Digital Skills Card for QCC-accredited vocational certificates. GulfGotTalents, the federal creative hiring platform launched in July 2026, sits on the sourcing side of the same chain, and Dubai’s unified licence and investor register show the same direction on the corporate side: one verified record instead of repeated paperwork.

Checklist for HR teams and business owners

• List the roles in your company for which an Abu Dhabi regulator requires a personnel conformity certificate; those are the roles where the card applies first.
• Ask candidates and existing staff whether their certificate was issued under a QCC-accredited programme delivered by UAC; only those certificates are linked to a Digital Skills Card at launch.
• Add a QR scan to the onboarding checklist and store the verification result in the personnel file instead of a photocopy.
• Keep the other checks in place: MoFA attestation for educational documents, MoHRE academic verification for degrees, and the work permit and visa process for every new hire.
• Do not treat the card as a licence. Trade licences, professional permits and regulator approvals are issued separately and remain mandatory.
• For staff relocating from abroad, arrange legalisation of diplomas and other documents in the country of origin before arrival; the skills card covers assessed competencies, not foreign paperwork.
• Watch QCC and UAC announcements for the list of occupations and any fees; neither was published at launch.

How Atlant Capital can help

Atlant Capital works with foreign entrepreneurs and companies that hire and relocate staff to the UAE. We register companies in the UAE on the mainland and in free zones, process work permits and residence visas for employees and their families, open corporate and personal bank accounts, and arrange legalisation of diplomas, certificates and powers of attorney for staff who arrive from abroad. Accounting, audit and tax filing are provided by licensed accounting firms from our partner network.

Conclusion

The Digital Skills Card is a small change in form and a larger one in procedure. The certificate behind it has existed since QCC’s personnel conformity schemes went online in December 2022 and UAC took over assessments for 72 occupations in July 2023; what is new from 7 September 2026 is that a QR scan on ADI Chain replaces the paper copy and the enquiry to the issuer. For employers in Abu Dhabi it shortens onboarding and inspections in regulated trades; for foreign workers it gives a credential that stays with them at a job change. Licences, work permits and visas are unchanged, and the list of covered occupations and any fees are still to be published.

FAQ

What is the Abu Dhabi Digital Skills Card?

It is a digital, QR-coded version of a personnel conformity certificate issued under programmes accredited by the Abu Dhabi Quality and Conformity Council (QCC) and delivered by Union Assessment and Quality Accreditation (UAC). It was launched on 7 September 2026 as the first digitally verifiable professional credential in the Gulf region, and the record is held on the ADI Chain blockchain operated by ADI Foundation.

How does an employer verify a Digital Skills Card?

By scanning the QR code on the card with a smartphone. The scan confirms on ADI Chain, the regulation-compliant blockchain operated by ADI Foundation, whether the certificate is valid and authentic, without paper copies or a request to the issuing body. Regulators and other stakeholders use the same scan.

Which qualifications does the Digital Skills Card cover?

At launch, certifications awarded under QCC-accredited personnel conformity programmes delivered by UAC. The underlying QCC and UAC agreement of 26 July 2023 covers 72 occupations in 13 sectors, including car workshops, construction, food, public health and oil and gas, with assessments in Arabic, English, Urdu and Hindi. UAC plans to add further certifications, qualifications and professional achievements; the exact list of occupations linked to the card was not published at launch.

Does the Digital Skills Card replace a work permit or a professional licence in the UAE?

No. The card verifies that a certificate of conformity is genuine and in force. Work permits and residence visas are still issued through MoHRE, free zone authorities and the immigration authorities, and professional licences and approvals are still issued by the relevant regulators. The launch announcements do not change those requirements.