News & Views Podcast: How Uzbekistan Built Open Banking Before the West

If you work in fintech, you’ve probably heard a lot about the same familiar markets. But Uzbekistan is still flying under the radar—and that may be exactly why it matters. In a recent conversation with Oliver Hughes, head of international business at TBC Group, we explored why this fast-changing Central Asian market is attracting serious attention from digital banking and payments players. What makes Uzbekistan interesting isn’t just its size. It’s the combination of rapid population growth, a young digitally native audience, a sophisticated local payments ecosystem, and a regulator that is actively helping modernize the market. In this post, you’ll learn why Uzbekistan is different, how its payments infrastructure works, and what that means for the future of banking, lending, and AI-driven financial services. Uzbekistan’s FinTech Opportunity Starts with Demographics One of the first things that stands out about Uzbekistan is its scale. The country is approaching 40 million people, and that population is not static—it’s growing by roughly 600,000 to 800,000 people every year. That kind of demographic momentum matters in fintech because payments, banking, and digital financial services all become more valuable as more people enter the formal economy. Just as important, the population is young. Hughes pointed out that each new cohort is more digitally native than the last, which creates a natural advantage for mobile-first products. If you’re building a financial app, younger users tend to adopt faster, transact more often, and move more comfortably between services. That dynamic changes the economics of growth. Instead of fighting to convert a mature market that is already saturated, fintech companies in Uzbekistan can expand as the market itself expands. More users, more digital adoption, and more transaction volume all feed into each other. Uzbekistan is sometimes grouped with larger frontier or emerging economies, but its combination of scale, growth, and digital openness gives it a distinct profile. It’s not just another frontier market. It’s one where the population structure itself supports fintech adoption. The Payments Layer Is Already Built—and That Changes Everything In many markets, fintech starts with a problem: payments infrastructure is fragmented, expensive, or outdated. Uzbekistan is unusual because the country already has a relatively sophisticated payments ecosystem in place. For years, Visa and Mastercard were largely frozen out of the market. Instead, two local payment systems— Uzcard and Humo—became the foundation of domestic payments. On top of those systems, an API layer was built, which then enabled a broader ecosystem of aggregation apps, card linking, peer-to-peer transfers, QR payments, utility payments, and mobile top-ups. That matters because it creates something close to open banking, Uzbek style. Instead of waiting for the infrastructure to catch up, fintech companies can build on top of an existing payments base. Hughes explained that this has allowed TBC to offer products like TBC UZ, a banking app, and Payme, a major payments app used for linking cards, making transfers, and handling everyday transactions. What’s especially notable is how quickly this has helped push the market from cash to non-cash payments. In markets where the rails are already in place, adoption can move faster than expected because the user experience becomes simpler and more connected. For international fintechs, this is a crucial lesson. You can’t assume that global card networks will dominate every market. In Uzbekistan, the locally built system is the real backbone, and that has shaped how digital banking evolved. Regulation in Uzbekistan Is More Active Than You Might Expect A common assumption about frontier markets is that regulation lags behind innovation. Uzbekistan appears to be bucking that trend in a few important ways. According to Hughes, the central bank and broader government have taken a highly interventionist but forward-moving approach. The market is still developing—especially in consumer lending and digital banking—but regulators are not standing still. They’re working in dialogue with industry and actively modernizing the legal framework around financial services. That matters because fintech growth depends on more than product ideas. It depends on whether a market can support new forms of data use, cloud processing, tokenization, and digital identity. Uzbekistan has started to move in that direction. One of the biggest recent changes has been legislation allowing certain forms of offshore storage and processing of personal data. That’s a significant shift because it opens the door for more advanced mobile and digital services, including support for products from Apple Pay, Google Pay, and similar platforms. Hughes noted that this kind of legal change is a big step forward for the country’s digital economy. There are still limits, especially for banks, which must keep most data onshore because of banking secrecy laws. But the direction of travel is clear: the market is becoming more technologically flexible while still keeping a close eye on data governance and control. For fintech founders and operators, the takeaway is simple: regulation in Uzbekistan is not just a hurdle. It’s part of the market-building process. If you understand that, you can plan better and move faster. Data, Lending, and AI Could Be the Next Big Leap If payments are the base layer of fintech, data is what unlocks the next layer. And Uzbekistan seems unusually well positioned here too. Hughes described the country as a data-rich environment. That includes digitized government services, a centralized credit bureau, mobile and device data, telco data, and a centralized KYC process with liveness capabilities. In other words, there is enough structured information available to support more modern underwriting and faster digital lending decisions. That’s important because consumer lending is still relatively new at scale in Uzbekistan. As the market matures, access to high-quality data could help lenders make decisions faster and more accurately, especially in a mobile-first environment. It also means digital lenders can build more of the customer journey online, rather than relying on the slow, manual processes still common in many markets. This is where the AI angle becomes especially interesting. Hughes believes Uzbekistan may be better positioned than some older banking markets for the transition into more agentic, conversational, and AI-enabled financial experiences. Why? Because the country is building a lot of infrastructure from scratch rather than trying to patch over decades of legacy systems. Of course, leapfrogging is never automatic. Skills, infrastructure, and policy all need to keep evolving. But the ingredients are there: growing digital adoption, structured data, a proactive government, and a financial ecosystem that is still being assembled rather than merely maintained. If you’re watching the intersection of fintech and AI, Uzbekistan is worth tracking closely. It may become a market where new financial experiences are easier to launch than in older, more rigid systems. TBC’s Role: Building a Full Digital Financial Ecosystem TBC Group is not just participating in the market—it’s helping shape it. Hughes said TBC Uzbekistan now has 23 million registered users and around 6 million monthly active users. The company has built a broad digital banking platform that covers payments, consumer lending, B2B payments, and card products. It has also expanded into adjacent services, including an online insurer and a planned acquisition of one of the country’s largest classifieds businesses from OLX. That strategy tells you a lot about where fintech competition in Uzbekistan is going. It isn’t only about launching a bank account or a payments app. It’s about building a wider ecosystem of services around the customer’s everyday life. At the same time, TBC is not the only player worth watching. Hughes noted that other companies, including Uzum, are building e-commerce and financial services together, while players like Wildberries, Ozon, and Yandex are increasing their presence in the market. In other words, the ecosystem is getting crowded—but in a good way. More entrants mean more education, more infrastructure, and more momentum. For a developing market, that can help raise the standard across the whole industry. The strategic implication is that the winners in Uzbekistan may be the companies that build the broadest, most useful platforms—not just the slickest apps. As the market grows, customer trust and convenience will matter as much as product novelty. What Happens Next in Uzbekistan FinTech? The next 6 to 12 months in Uzbekistan fintech will likely be shaped by two big themes. First, banking will become more conversational. Hughes expects the customer experience to shift further toward voice, dialogue, and AI-assisted interactions. TBC already has an AI agent in its app, and the direction is clear: customers will increasingly expect to do banking through natural language rather than taps and menus. Second, AI will lower the barriers to building financial products. While banking remains heavily regulated, parts of the financial services chain are becoming easier to create using modern coding tools and AI-assisted development. That could lead to more specialized entrants, more experimentation, and faster innovation across the value chain. For now, the most important thing to understand is that Uzbekistan is not waiting for the future—it is actively building it. The market has strong demographics, an unusually developed payments layer, improving regulation, and a growing ecosystem of digital players. That combination is rare. If you’re looking for the next fintech market to watch, this is one of the most compelling ones on the map. Frequently Asked Questions Why is Uzbekistan becoming interesting for fintech companies? Uzbekistan combines a large and growing population with high mobile adoption and a modernizing financial infrastructure. That makes it attractive for companies building digital banking, payments, and lending products. Does Uzbekistan have open banking? It is not open banking in the same way as in the UK or parts of Europe, but it does have a unique API-based payments layer that allows cards to be linked to apps and data to be shared across services. That creates many of the same practical opportunities. What makes Uzbekistan different from other emerging fintech markets? A few things: strong demographic growth, a sophisticated local payments system, a proactive regulator, and a market that is still early enough for new players to shape it. Those factors together make it unusually dynamic. Is AI likely to matter in Uzbekistan fintech? Yes. Because the market is building new infrastructure rather than replacing deeply entrenched legacy systems, it may be able to adopt AI-driven experiences faster than older markets. That includes conversational banking and AI-assisted underwriting. The full episode is available on YouTube: AI level 2 of 5: drafted by our AI editorial assistant from source material our editor chose; fact-checked, edited and signed off by Mark Walker, Editorial Director. What the levels mean