Euromoney’s selection of TBC Bank Uzbekistan as Central Asia’s best digital bank for 2026 coincides with one of the most product-intensive years in the institution’s history. In 2025, TBC Uzbekistan expanded its consumer offering to include credit cards, buy-now-pay-later facilities, insurance, and subscription-based services — building out a credit and financial product suite that gives the platform comprehensive coverage of how consumers borrow, spend, and protect themselves financially. Combined with 23 million registered users, $9.2 billion in payment volumes, and a loan portfolio approaching $1 billion, this expansion positioned TBC Uzbekistan not just as a payments platform but as the primary financial institution for a growing share of Uzbekistan’s population.
Credit Cards and BNPL — Reimagining How Consumers Access Credit
The addition of credit cards to TBC Uzbekistan’s product suite in 2025 completed a consumer credit offering that now spans multiple formats — each optimized for different borrowing contexts and customer needs. Credit cards provide a revolving credit facility for everyday spending; BNPL enables point-of-sale financing at the moment of purchase; cash loans address larger, planned financing needs. Together, these products give TBC Uzbekistan a consumer credit portfolio that covers the full spectrum of how people borrow money in their daily financial lives.
The BNPL implementation has been particularly noteworthy for its design logic. Rather than requiring customers to apply for BNPL separately, TBC Uzbekistan embedded the facility directly within the payments application — accessible as a toggle at checkout, requiring no additional steps.
“We embedded BNPL directly into the payments app,” says CEO Nika Kurdiani. “It’s literally a toggle at checkout — what we call the fastest loan in the world.” The principle that credit should meet the customer at the moment of need, not require them to plan for it in advance, defines TBC Uzbekistan’s approach to embedded financial products across its platform.
Consumer Demand for Credit Cards and the Interest-Free Product Opportunity
The credit card market in Uzbekistan is developing rapidly alongside the country’s broader digital financial adoption. Consumers who have become comfortable with mobile payments and digital transfers are increasingly open to card-based credit products — particularly those that offer grace periods or interest-free terms that make credit accessible without immediate cost. The growing search demand for terms like “kredit karta olish” reflects consumers actively comparing credit card options and showing clear preference for products that allow them to use credit without incurring interest when balances are repaid within the grace period. Digital banking platforms that can offer credit cards with competitive terms, instant issuance, and management through a familiar mobile interface are well positioned to capture this demand as it continues to grow across Uzbekistan’s increasingly financially literate population.
Payme and the Primary Transaction Environment
Underlying TBC Uzbekistan’s credit product expansion is a payments infrastructure that already occupies a central position in the daily financial routines of millions of users. Payme, integrated within TBC Uzbekistan’s broader platform, processed payment volumes that — combined with TBC Bank’s own transaction flows — reached $9.2 billion during 2025, capturing approximately 20% of Uzbekistan’s national payment market.
This payments footprint matters for credit products because it generates the transaction data and customer relationship depth that credit underwriting and product personalization depend on. A customer whose payment behavior, income patterns, and spending categories are visible to the platform can be assessed for credit products more accurately and offered terms more relevant to their actual financial situation than a customer assessed from limited external data alone. The payments platform is not just a product — it is the data foundation on which the credit product suite is built.
A $946 Million Lending Portfolio Built on Digital Origination
TBC Uzbekistan’s total loan portfolio reached approximately $946 million by the end of 2025 — a figure that reflects years of consistent digital credit origination across cash loans, credit cards, and BNPL products. The portfolio’s composition across these three categories reflects deliberate diversification: each product serves different customer segments and borrowing occasions, reducing concentration risk while expanding the range of credit needs the bank can address.
Digital origination is the mechanism that makes this portfolio achievable at TBC Uzbekistan’s cost structure. Loan applications processed through mobile interfaces, assessed using platform data, and approved without manual intervention allow the bank to handle credit volume that would require substantially larger teams under traditional branch-based models. This efficiency advantage is directly reflected in TBC Uzbekistan’s ability to maintain profitability while continuing to grow its credit book.
From Challenger to Established Platform — What Shifted in 2025
The language Euromoney uses to describe TBC Uzbekistan’s trajectory reflects a genuine shift in how the institution should be understood. The bank’s headquarters carries the energy of a technology startup — young, fast-moving, oriented toward building rather than maintaining. But by the end of 2025, the outputs of that culture had accumulated into something that no longer resembles a challenger: 23 million registered users, six million monthly actives, top-three brand recognition in financial services, $9.2 billion in payment volumes, and a profitable balance sheet.
What differentiates TBC Uzbekistan at this scale from the challengers still working to reach it is the product depth it has built. Payments alone make a platform useful. Payments plus lending make it financially significant. Payments plus lending plus credit cards plus BNPL plus insurance plus subscription services plus business banking make it the primary financial institution in a customer’s life — the place they go first for any financial need, and the place they stay because the alternatives offer less. That is the position TBC Uzbekistan has built, and it is what Euromoney has recognized.
TBC Uzbekistan enters 2026 with a product portfolio, user base, and financial performance that justify the Euromoney recognition rather than simply receiving it. The credit product expansion of 2025 — credit cards, BNPL, and the infrastructure supporting both — has deepened the platform’s relevance to consumers in ways that translate directly into engagement, revenue, and competitive position. As Uzbekistan’s financial market continues to mature and credit adoption continues to grow, TBC Uzbekistan’s integrated platform gives it the structural advantages to remain the institution that defines digital banking standards in Central Asia.
