The Scoop
Abu Dhabi is rolling out marriage rites by smartphone.
Starting this week, the government-run super app TAMM will offer marriage services — from identity authentication, to booking the officiant, and hosting the virtual ceremony — all from one’s smartphone. The process can be done in a day and costs 800 dirhams ($217), a spokesperson told Semafor.
The service, overseen by the Abu Dhabi courts authority, will be available to UAE citizens, residents, and visitors. For an additional 300 dirhams ($81), an attested digital marriage certificate — valid to use outside the UAE — is available through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, they said.
Know More
The new service is a sign of the times for the UAE capital, where billions of dollars in technology investments — broadly aimed at improving quality of life for the expat-hungry emirate — are converging, in part, on this government-run app.
“In 2025, why do you need to go to a building to sign a register? That’s very antiquated,” Byron James, a partner at Expatriate Law who specializes in civil cases for high-net-worth families, told Semafor.
For James, who had an Abu Dhabi client finalize a divorce via video feed from a first-class cabin on an Etihad flight, marriages by TAMM — which can offer secure identity verification and do away with in-person bureaucracy — are “a very logical next step.”
TAMM’s all-online marriage service is a first for the region, but not for the world. The state of Utah and Ukraine have both rolled out something similar: In Utah, the move helped address COVID-era restrictions as a cross-border offering; and in Ukraine, the service on its citizen app has been popular among couples separated by war.
Step Back
The new marriage service is one of more than 1,100 that TAMM — Arabic for “consider it done” — offers to its 3.6 million users. The app consolidates the work of over 40 government ministries, as well as customer accounts for services such as electricity provision and internet, into a single platform. Abu Dhabi residents use TAMM for a wide range of purposes, from obtaining a baby’s birth certificate to reporting litter in the street.
TAMM is part of a three-year digital strategy push, backed by a 13 billion dirham ($3.54 billion) investment in infrastructure aimed at automating government services by 2027.
That goal marks something of a final sprint for TAMM, which began in the mid-2000s, when then-Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed championed one-stop service centers and an e-government initiative was rolled out. The model evolved from physical counters and a web portal to the super app Abu Dhabi uses today.
Notable
- Sign-ups for organ donation in Saudi Arabia have jumped, thanks in part to government super app Tawakkalna, Arabic for “trusted,” AGBI reported.
- Sky-high divorce settlements are becoming the norm in Abu Dhabi, less than five years after a civil court opened to serve non-Emirati residents, Semafor reported.