MoFAIC attestation in the UAE

MoFAIC has no walk-in centres, and has not since 2022

There is nowhere in the UAE you can queue up and have a document attested by the Ministry over a counter. MoFAIC’s own FAQ says it in one line: “The Ministry does not have any Customer Happiness Centers. You can apply for services via the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website or the UAE MOFA smartphone application.” A second answer on the same page explains that “MoFA Customer Happiness Centres are closed, in line with the directives of the UAE visionary leadership towards improving government services and customer experience.” The closure took effect on 18 July 2022.

This is the most useful thing on this page, because a large number of attestation pages still publish MoFAIC centre addresses in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and the northern emirates, with opening hours and parking notes. People act on those pages, take a morning off work, and arrive at a building that will not serve them.

What MoFAIC is, and where it sits in the chain

MoFAIC is the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In an attestation chain it is the last government step, and it is the step that makes a foreign document usable in front of a UAE employer, a court, a university or the Federal Authority for Identity and Citizenship.

For a document issued outside the UAE, the sequence is fixed. The issuing body or a notary certifies it locally. The foreign ministry of the issuing country attests that. The UAE embassy or consulate in that country attests the foreign ministry. MoFAIC then attests the UAE mission, inside the UAE. Where the document will be used in an Arabic-language process, a Ministry of Justice–registered legal translator translates it afterwards.

Because the UAE is not a contracting party to the Hague Apostille Convention, none of that can be replaced by an apostille. An apostille alone has no standing here, which is covered in full on apostille vs attestation for the UAE.

A UAE-issued document going the other way follows a shorter chain. There is no foreign ministry step before MoFAIC, because MoFAIC is the foreign ministry. It attests the UAE issuing entity’s seal directly, and the MoFAIC application asks you to choose between “Attestation by the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs only” and attestation by MoFAIC “followed by attestation by the relevant UAE Embassy or Consulate”. If the destination country instead wants its own embassy in the UAE to finish the job, you arrange that separately. MoFAIC will not do it for you.

What MoFAIC attests: signatures and seals, not contents

MoFAIC attestation certifies that the signature and seal on a document are genuine. It says nothing about whether the document is true. The Ministry’s own wording is that attestation “certifies the authenticity of the signatures and seals on documents issued within or outside the United Arab Emirates.”

Read practically, that means a MoFAIC stamp does not confirm:

• That you actually earned the degree named on the certificate
• That the facts stated inside the document are correct
• That the issuing institution is accredited or recognised in the UAE
• That the document is fit for the particular UAE purpose you need it for

It also explains why the chain cannot be short-cut. Each authority authenticates only the previous authority’s stamp. MoFAIC holds specimen signatures for UAE embassies. It does not hold the signature of a university registrar in Kerala or a solicitor in Manchester, so it cannot attest their seal directly, no matter how genuine the certificate is.

The practical consequence catches graduates out. A fully attested degree can still be turned down when the qualification itself is assessed, because assessing the qualification is a different process run by a different ministry, with its own fee and its own outcome. Attestation is a signature check. Recognition and primary-source verification are an academic assessment. Passing one does not carry you through the other.

The only channels that actually exist

MoFAIC publishes four ways in, and no others:

1. mofa.gov.ae, which requires a UAE PASS login. Non-residents can create a UAE PASS account at uaepass.ae.
2. The UAE MOFA smart app, on iOS and Android.
3. UAE embassies and consulates abroad, for documents issued in that country.
4. Phone, on +971 800 44444, for People of Determination, senior Emiratis and senior residents. Death certificate attestation requests are also accepted by phone.

There are no MoFAIC typing centres and no MoFAIC service centres. Typing centres, Amer and Tas’heel offices are intermediaries: they submit through the same public portal you can use yourself, and they charge for doing so.

One limit to plan around: MoFAIC’s courier service only covers the UAE. Outside the country, collection and return are handled by the mission’s own outsourcing partner.

How much does MoFAIC charge?

AED 150 for a personal document and AED 2,000 for a commercial document. Those figures are not taken from a blog. They come from the fee lookup that sits behind MoFAIC’s own published fee guide on mofa.gov.ae, retrieved on 23 August 2026. Every one of the 35 rows in the personal table is AED 150, for documents issued inside and outside the UAE. Every row in the commercial table is AED 2,000, with a single exception: a UAE-issued document already attested outside, at AED 150. On top of either, MoFAIC applies a transaction surcharge of AED 3 + 2 per cent per transaction.

The itemised tables above carry the fees, the courier options and the source for each.

The classification traps that change the bill

The AED 150 headline is right for one document and wrong for most real applications. Four rules do the damage, and all four are MoFAIC’s own:

• A certificate and a transcript are two documents. MoFAIC states that for educational documents, “certificate & transcripts are treated as two different documents”. A graduate submitting both pays AED 300, not AED 150. See degree certificate attestation.
• The MOA and the AOA are two documents. The mission pages state that “memorandum and articles of association must be attested separately”, which puts a standard company pair at AED 4,000.
• A power of attorney with commercial content is a commercial document. Every UAE mission page carries the same sentence: “A power of attorney containing commercial content is considered a commercial document.” A general POA for selling a car is AED 150. The moment it touches company matters it is AED 2,000.
• A long agreement can be several documents. MoFAIC states that “commercial contracts or agreements may be considered as multiple documents based on its content”. There is no published page count that triggers this.

The part almost nobody says out loud is that you do not make the classification call. MoFAIC does, at submission. The UAE Embassy in New Delhi puts it bluntly: “The fee of the commercial documents depends on the matter / content. Please show the documents at the counter to know the fees.” So budget for the commercial rate on anything that mentions a company, and treat AED 150 as the floor rather than the price. This is covered further on commercial document attestation.

Commercial invoices: a contradiction we cannot resolve for you

Commercial invoices and certificates of origin do not go through the ordinary attestation service at all. They run through eDAS 2.0, the electronic documents attestation system for goods imported into the UAE.

Their fee is genuinely unclear right now, and both sides of the conflict are official. MoFAIC’s FAQ says “the flat rate 150 dirhams + service fees is applied for the attestation of commercial invoices starting February 1st, 2023”. The Ministry’s own live fee lookup still returns a sliding scale by invoice value, running from AED 100 on an invoice of AED 1 to 10,000 up to AED 3,000 in the AED 1,000,001 to 2,000,000 band, and 0.002 times the value above AED 2,000,001. We are not going to pick a side and print a number that might cost you thousands. Check the fee inside the eDAS submission before you commit to a shipment.

An open question on the combined service

For documents issued abroad, it is not published whether the UAE embassy leg is an additional AED 150 or whether AED 150 covers the pair. MoFAIC’s worked examples for UAE-issued documents going abroad show AED 150 for MoFAIC plus AED 150 for the UAE embassy in the destination country, AED 300 in total. The mirror figure for inbound documents is not published anywhere we could find. Budget for both legs and treat the single-fee outcome as a bonus.

One service, two attestations

This is the change that has made most competitor pages wrong. For several countries, one application now covers both the UAE mission abroad and MoFAIC inside the UAE. The mission pages state it verbatim: “One service, two attestations: One application covers both the UAE Embassy in New Delhi and the UAE MoFA in the UAE.”

It is confirmed live on the digital attestation pages for New Delhi, Mumbai, Islamabad, Cairo and London. It does not remove the home foreign ministry step, which stays separate and still has to be done first.

If your document was issued anywhere not in that table, assume the MoFAIC step is a separate application you make yourself after the embassy stage. The UAE embassy attestation page covers that leg in detail.

How long does MoFAIC attestation take?

Between two hours and three business days, depending on the route, and MoFAIC does not let you choose the route. Its website “will determine whether your document will be processed through the Digital Attestation or Courier-Based Attestation pathway.”

Two limits are worth noting before you apply. A digital attestation application takes a maximum of five documents, all on the same route, and applications cannot be edited after submission.

Do you need to send the original document?

Yes, for anything issued outside the UAE. The mission pages are explicit: “The original physical document is required for the digital attestation process.” Courier instructions say the same, telling applicants to hand the original document to the courier.

The exception is a genuinely digital UAE-issued document. That means an original digital document with a verification feature such as a QR code, barcode, electronic link or reference number, supplied as a PDF that is not password-protected. MoFAIC states that “a scanned copy, photograph, or manually created copy is not considered an original digital document”, so photographing a paper certificate does not qualify.

Who needs a MoFAIC attestation

Where MoFAIC attestation is already bundled, and costs less

Two integrations are live where the attestation happens at the moment the document is issued, with no separate MoFAIC application at all. If your document is one of these, an agency has nothing to add.

• Emirates Schools Establishment public-school certificates: AED 15 for the ESE attestation, AED 15 for a hard-copy delivery, AED 150 for MoFAIC and AED 150 for the UAE embassy in the destination country. MoFAIC attestation lands three minutes after issuance.
• MOHAP and Emirates Health Services birth and death certificates: AED 300 in total, being AED 150 for MoFAIC and AED 150 for the UAE embassy in the destination country, processed within a few minutes without human intervention.

Verification, refunds and expiry

Any MoFAIC-attested document can be checked at https://verify.mofa.gov.ae using the attestation reference number and the issue date. Digitally attested UAE government documents can also be verified through the UAE PASS “verify the document” function. Do that before you hand anything to an employer.

Attestation itself never lapses: MoFAIC states that “there is no expiry date to an attested document.” The document underneath it can still expire, which is why a police clearance certificate needs sequencing carefully against its own validity window.

On refunds, a document rejected by MoFAIC or by a mission has its attestation fee refunded automatically within 14 working days. Cancel before delivery and the same 14 working days applies, but delivery fees are not refundable. Full costs across the whole chain, including the home-country stages MoFAIC does not charge for, are set out on what attestation costs in the UAE.