Euromoney has awarded TBC Uzbekistan the title of Central Asia’s Best Digital Bank for 2026, citing the institution’s sustained expansion, product innovation, and deepening of customer relationships across one of the region’s most rapidly evolving financial markets.
The award, issued as part of Euromoney’s annual Awards for Excellence, is based on performance assessed throughout 2025 a year that saw TBC Uzbekistan deliver growth across every major operational indicator.
The Euromoney Awards for Excellence are among the most established benchmarks in international banking, drawing assessments from over 700 financial institutions across 125 countries.
For an institution that launched only in 2020, TBC Uzbekistan’s recognition as the region’s leading digital bank in 2026 represents a remarkable compression of the time typically required to build credible institutional standing in a competitive international context.
Performance at Scale
The operational metrics that underpin TBC Uzbekistan’s Euromoney recognition are substantial. By the end of 2025, the platform had accumulated 23 million registered users a year-on-year increase of 4.6 million.
Monthly active users stood at approximately 6 million, reflecting a high level of genuine engagement rather than passive registration. Combined payment volumes across TBC Bank and the Payme platform reached $9.2 billion for the year.
The company’s share of Uzbekistan’s national payment market stands at approximately 20% a position that reflects both the depth of consumer adoption and the breadth of merchant acceptance that underpins any serious payments infrastructure play.
The loan portfolio reached approximately $946 million, driven by continued expansion in consumer credit across a market where mobile-first lending has grown significantly alongside rising smartphone penetration and digital literacy.
These figures describe a business that has achieved genuine platform scale within a short operating history. TBC Uzbekistan’s dual-sided ecosystem model connecting consumers and businesses through a unified digital platform has created network effects that compound as the user base grows.
The more consumers engage with the platform, the more valuable it becomes for business customers; the more businesses participate, the richer the range of services available to consumers.
Technology Ownership as a Strategic Advantage
One of the factors that has enabled TBC Uzbekistan to grow at this pace without compromising product quality is its approach to technology.
CFO Sharof Sharipov has noted that the company’s entire technology stack is built in-house a decision that drives lower costs and enables a level of product iteration speed that would be difficult to achieve through third-party infrastructure. This ownership of the technology layer is not merely an operational preference; it is a structural competitive advantage.
The in-house development approach extends to artificial intelligence. TBC Uzbekistan has built proprietary speech recognition and synthesis capabilities, as well as Uzbek-language large language models a technically demanding undertaking that few organisations in the region have attempted.
These capabilities power Lola, the company’s AI banking assistant, which operates across customer support, sales, and collections at scale.
CEO Nika Kurdiani has highlighted the company’s BNPL product as an example of how embedded technology can redefine the user experience, describing it as “the fastest loan” a toggle at checkout rather than a separate application process.
Savings, Deposits, and the Deepening of Financial Engagement
As TBC Uzbekistan has expanded its product range and deepened its penetration of the consumer market, it has moved into financial product categories that reflect a maturing relationship between users and their digital bank.
Beyond payments and credit, consumers are increasingly engaging with savings and deposit products — a development that reflects growing financial confidence and a broader shift toward longer-term financial planning.
The rising interest in concepts such as “omonat kalkulyatori” points to a segment of the population that is actively seeking tools to compare savings options, calculate returns, and make informed decisions about where to place their money.
Digital platforms that make these products accessible with clear terms, real-time calculators, and straightforward application processes are well positioned to capture this evolving demand.
This transition from transactional banking to savings engagement represents a meaningful step in the development of Uzbekistan’s retail financial market.
Users who begin by opening a current account or making payments through an app are increasingly expanding their relationship with digital platforms to include structured savings, term deposits, and other wealth management instruments.
For TBC Uzbekistan, which already serves millions of active users, the opportunity to deepen these relationships through savings products is both commercially significant and strategically important.
SME Services and the Platform’s Next Phase
TBC Uzbekistan’s enterprise offering has expanded considerably as part of its broader growth strategy. Digital banking services for small and medium-sized businesses now include payment acceptance infrastructure, lending products, and operational software tools a combination that addresses the full spectrum of financial needs for merchants and entrepreneurs operating in Uzbekistan’s increasingly digital commercial environment.
The addition of business credit cards, BNPL for enterprise customers, and subscription management tools reflects TBC’s commitment to making its business platform as comprehensive as its consumer offering.
Insurance products and subscription services added during 2025 have further extended the platform’s reach into the daily financial and commercial lives of its users, increasing engagement frequency and building the kind of habitual platform use that sustains long-term retention.
For Uzbekistan’s financial sector, the Euromoney recognition carries a broader significance. It confirms that a digital-native institution, built from scratch in a frontier market, can achieve the kind of international standing previously associated with established banks in developed economies.
TBC Uzbekistan, backed by London-listed TBC Bank Group, has demonstrated that the combination of local market focus, in-house technology investment, and disciplined financial management can produce results that stand up to global scrutiny.
The 2026 award is a marker of how far that journey has come and a clear signal of the scale of ambition that remains ahead.
