Islamic Banking and Digital Financial Technologies in Uzbekistan: Integration Opportunities and Limitations (Innovations in Science and Technologies)

Summary

• Law No. O'RQ-1126, signed on 27 March 2026, created the legal basis for Islamic banks and Islamic windows at conventional banks in Uzbekistan.p.2
• According to KPMG, cashless card payments reached about 72% of nominal GDP in 2025, up from about 25% in 2021.p.2
• From 1 September 2026 the cashless payment threshold was raised from 25 million soum to 400 times the base calculation unit, or 176 million soum.p.7
• Islamic financial services in the first five months of 2026 amounted to only 22 billion soum, very small next to bank payment flows.p.9
• On 23 October 2026 the first Islamic banking licence was granted to the joint-stock company Open Bank.p.10

Key insights

1. The law came into force at the end of June 2026 and an Islamic Finance Council was set up under the Central Bank.p.2
2. The study is a desk research based on secondary sources, with no survey or interview data collected.p.5
3. Under the 2025 decree PF-246, from 1 April 2026 purchases above 25 million soum must be made cashless.p.7
4. The proposed product-technology-control matrix links products such as murabaha, ijara and sukuk to digital tools and Sharia oversight points.p.8
5. The results partly confirm the hypothesis: digital infrastructure is ready, while the institutional layer is still forming.p.9
6. The integration matrix has not been empirically tested, and no statistical series on Islamic bank activity exists yet.p.10