Mazal opens a marketplace for Dubai number plates

Mazal has opened an app for buying and selling Dubai’s expensive vehicle number plates, and it holds the buyer’s money until the Roads and Transport Authority confirms the transfer. The launch, reported from 2 October 2026, included what the company called the country’s first live auction of plates already in private hands. Ten lots brought Dh3.2 million. The top lot, O 566, sold for Dh800,000. The fee on a sale is 5 percent. Transguard is the partner for large cash payments. Users can list a plate, ask for a value, bid, or start a deal from a QR code. The second-hand market is the gap Mazal is selling into. Dubai’s own auctions, which have produced the record prices, send proceeds to charity. Resales have run through Instagram, brokers and handovers. Chairman Abdulla AlMeer told The National there had not been an escrow step between two private parties. His own plates, a green Range Rover at about $245,000 and a Lamborghini at about $136,000, were used in the Semafor account as a personal example. Jawlah put the pair above Dh1.4 million. The app also sorts plates the way a shop sorts gold: 18, 21 or 24 karat, and a top class it calls mithali, Arabic for perfect. The prices people already know are from the official sales, not from this app. P7 went for Dh55 million, about $15 million, in 2023. AA9 fetched Dh38 million in 2021. DD6 reached Dh37 million in March 2026. D5 has been reported at Dh33 million. Mazal’s analysts say about Dh1.7 billion, or $463 million, changed hands in three years, and that the market grows about 20 percent a year. Those totals are the company’s, not an authority bulletin. A launch night of Dh3.2 million is a real auction. It is not evidence that the app now clears the market. For readers outside Dubai, the plate is a local asset with a public register behind it. Abu Dhabi runs its own high-value numbers. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have prestige plates too, sold under different rules. Mazal, on this launch, is a Dubai secondary desk. The authority still has to record the new owner. Escrow reduces the risk that a buyer pays and the seller keeps the plate. It does not set the price, and it does not make a number plate a regulated security. A 5 percent fee on a Dh55 million plate would be Dh2.75 million. No such sale has gone through the app. The founders are Emirati. No funding round was disclosed with the launch. Growth of 20 percent is a company estimate. The gold grades are a label, not a standard published by the transport authority. If Mazal publishes monthly volume against the Dh1.7 billion claim, the escrow desk has a market. If the next note is another grading name, count transfers completed and fees taken. The figure to ask for is plates moved, not plates listed.