UAE PASS is the federal digital identity of the United Arab Emirates. It is operated by the Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority and is the mechanism by which a UAE resident authenticates themselves to government and approved private-sector services. In tenant screening, UAE PASS performs two functions: it authenticates the tenant as the person submitting the screen, and it transmits the tenant’s consent to specific verification components that require authenticated permission.
UAE PASS does two things in a screen, and only two things. It establishes who the tenant is, with the cryptographic certainty that the federal identity provides. It then carries the tenant’s consent — given inside the UAE PASS application on the tenant’s own device, by their own action — to specific verification components.
The most common consent passed through UAE PASS in a screen is the consent to retrieve the Etihad Credit Bureau credit score, through the bureau’s Tenant Screening service launched in April 2026. The tenant opens UAE PASS, sees the request, reads what is being asked, and approves or declines. If approved, the consent token reaches the Etihad Credit Bureau and the score is returned to the requesting landlord. If declined, the score is not returned and the landlord cannot access it through this channel.
UAE PASS is not a screen. It does not verify employment. It does not check Ejari history. It does not contact prior landlords. It does not produce a file. It is the consent and authentication rail; the verification work is conducted separately and depends on UAE PASS only for the credit component and for confirming the tenant’s identity.
UAE PASS does not bind the tenant to a screen they have not consented to. Consent in UAE PASS is per-action: the tenant consents to a specific request, from a specific party, at a specific moment. Future requests require further consent. A tenant who has consented to a screen by one landlord has not thereby consented to any future screen by any future party.
When a screening party requests the Etihad Credit Bureau component, the tenant receives a request inside UAE PASS that identifies the requesting party, identifies what is being requested, and asks the tenant to approve or decline. The request remains pending until the tenant acts on it or until it expires. A tenant who does not act on a request has not consented; the request is treated as declined.
The tenant retains a record of consents given inside UAE PASS itself. This record is not under the control of the screening party. The tenant can review their consent history at any time.
UAE PASS handles the consent for the components that pass through the federal rail. The remaining components of a screen — employment verification, prior landlord references, Ejari history, cheque return history outside the bureau channel — require their own consent mechanisms. A well-constructed screen documents each consent separately. The tenant is not asked to give blanket consent to a screen; they consent, component by component, to what is being checked and how.
A tenant who has given consent through UAE PASS for a specific component cannot retroactively prevent the data already returned from being held by the screening party for the purposes for which it was originally returned. The tenant can, however, decline any subsequent request, and the tenant has the rights under UAE Federal Decree-Law No. 45 of 2021 in relation to the data held about them. Where retention is governed by a stated retention period — for example, twelve months for the data underlying a screen — the data is removed at the end of that period regardless of any subsequent withdrawal.
Before UAE PASS reached the maturity it now has, the consent for checks of this kind was assembled through ad hoc signatures, scanned forms, and verbal authorisations. The federal rail replaced that with a single, authenticated, auditable mechanism. The improvement is in evidentiary quality rather than in the substance of consent: the tenant has always had to consent to checks of their data; the rail makes the consent visible, dated, and tied to a specific request.
For tenants, the rail means that a screen cannot proceed on certain components without their explicit, in-app approval. For landlords, the rail means that a screen produced with proper UAE PASS consents carries evidentiary weight that an ad hoc screen does not. For everyone involved, the rail standardises a process that previously varied.