Uzbekistan Is Building Digital Payment Infrastructure. Can It Become SME Finance Infrastructure?

Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.uz) — Uzbekistan’s digital-finance story is entering a more interesting phase. The country is no longer starting from a blank sheet of paper. It already has an instant-payment system, domestic card infrastructure, QR payments and a rapidly expanding agenda around fintech, Open Banking and account-to-account services.

In 2024, 47.6 million transactions were processed through the Central Bank’s Instant Payment System. Payments made through QR codes exceeded UZS 441.7 billion. The Central Bank’s 2025 annual report also recorded around 108,000 QR codes issued to business entities through the QR-online system, while QR transaction value increased by almost 1.3 times year on year.

The infrastructure is now moving another step forward. In 2026, the Central Bank identified a national payment switch, unified QR standards, Open Banking and account-to-account transfers among the priorities being discussed for the country’s 2026–2030 fintech strategy. From 1 July 2026, a unified UzQR acceptance framework also came into effect for trade and service businesses.

These are meaningful developments. But from a business-development perspective, they raise a more valuable question:

What should Uzbekistan build on top of this payment infrastructure?

The transaction should not be the end of the financial relationship. It can be the beginning of one.

The gap worth paying attention to

Uzbekistan has a large and economically important MSME sector. According to the World Bank, micro, small and medium enterprises account for more than 90% of businesses, 75% of employment and around 55% of GDP.

Yet access to finance remains a substantial constraint. The World Bank reports that more than one-third of MSMEs lack bank accounts, less than 30% of sales are conducted electronically, and only 10% of small enterprises and 16% of medium enterprises report access to loans. It estimates MSME credit demand at about US$13 billion, with a financing shortfall of roughly US$6 billion.

Those figures should increasingly be discussed alongside the development of digital payments.

The opportunity is not to assume that more digital transactions automatically create more credit. They do not. The opportunity is to use digital financial activity to reduce one of the persistent frictions in SME finance: limited visibility into how a smaller business actually operates.

From payment activity to financial visibility

For a business that receives more of its revenue digitally, transaction flows can gradually provide additional information about sales patterns, seasonality, revenue consistency and cash-flow behaviour.

That information should never become a credit score by itself. Revenue is not profit, transaction volume is not repayment capacity, and no digital footprint eliminates fraud, economic shocks or credit risk.

But transaction data can become one additional layer of context alongside financial statements, account history, credit-bureau information, collateral where appropriate and other conventional underwriting inputs.

The distinction matters. The useful progression is not “digital payment to automatic loan”. It is “digital payment to better financial visibility to better-informed financial decisions”.

This direction is already visible in Uzbekistan’s policy discussions. In June 2026, the Central Bank, World Bank and IFC discussed digital tools in SME lending, partial and portfolio credit guarantees, and improvements to risk-assessment systems under the FINGROW programme.

Payments can become distribution

There is a second opportunity. Payment infrastructure is not only infrastructure for moving money. As it matures, it can also become infrastructure for distributing financial services.

A merchant relationship may begin with accepting a QR payment. Over time, that relationship can potentially expand into a business account, cash-management tools, working-capital finance, supplier payments, factoring, insurance or other services.

This is particularly relevant as Uzbekistan develops Open Banking and account-to-account capabilities. If regulated financial products can be distributed through the digital environments where businesses already transact, banks may not need every financial relationship to begin inside a branch or even inside a traditional banking application.

The strategic question then changes from “Who processes the payment?” to “Who can build the most useful financial relationship around the payment?”

A stronger proposition for the SME

Digitalisation creates clear benefits for regulators and financial institutions: more efficient payments, better traceability and a larger formal financial footprint.

But sustainable adoption also requires a compelling proposition for the business itself.

For an SME, the value of digital payments becomes more powerful when digitisation can eventually improve access to useful financial services. A merchant should not only hear, “Accept digital payments because the economy is becoming digital.” The stronger proposition is, “Your digital activity can help the financial system understand your business better.”

That better understanding does not guarantee finance. But it can help create the conditions for more relevant working-capital products and a deeper banking relationship.

Uzbekistan should connect fintech experimentation to real business problems

The country’s fintech ecosystem is already beginning to test ideas that sit beyond payments. In March 2026, fintech startups presented solutions to the Central Bank and commercial banks including digital factoring for small businesses, transactional-data analytics, marketplace and logistics tools, card aggregation and AI-enabled services. Preliminary agreements were reached to explore pilots.

That is encouraging because the next phase of fintech development should not be judged only by the number of apps, payment methods or APIs launched.

It should also be judged by whether new infrastructure solves expensive business problems: access to working capital, slow supplier payments, fragmented financial information, weak cash-flow visibility and costly distribution of financial products.

In that sense, digital factoring is a particularly interesting example. It connects payments, receivables, business data and financing around a real operational need rather than treating fintech as an isolated technology layer.

Do not confuse better data with easier credit

There is a necessary caution. The global fintech conversation often moves too quickly from “more data” to “more lending”. Uzbekistan should avoid that shortcut.

The World Bank’s recent cross-country research finds a strong association between firms receiving electronic payments and lower credit constraints, particularly where information gaps are larger. But the authors themselves are careful about causality.

The practical lesson is not that payment data proves creditworthiness. It is that digital payments can create information that did not previously exist in a usable form.

The objective should therefore be better underwriting, not looser underwriting; better distribution, not indiscriminate lending; and financial inclusion that is commercially sustainable for both the business and the lender.

From payment infrastructure to productive financial infrastructure

Uzbekistan is now assembling several important layers at the same time: instant payments, unified QR acceptance, domestic payment infrastructure, Open Banking discussions, account-to-account services, fintech pilots and new mechanisms for SME finance.

The larger opportunity is to make those layers reinforce one another.

Alongside transaction volume, QR deployment and digital-payment adoption, I would increasingly watch a different set of measures: how many digitally active SMEs gain access to formal finance; how many businesses adopt additional financial services after beginning with payments; whether digital activity reduces the time and cost of underwriting; and whether working-capital products become more relevant to real cash-flow patterns.

These are not statistics currently published as one national dashboard. They are proposed measures for a different question:

• Is payment digitisation improving the financial capability of Uzbek businesses?
• If the answer increasingly becomes yes, Uzbekistan will have achieved something larger than a more modern payment system.
• It will have begun turning digital payment infrastructure into productive financial infrastructure.

Sharareh Abdi