Uzbekistan brings instalment payments under Central Bank oversight

The Central Bank of Uzbekistan will register instalment-payment operators under presidential resolution RP-294, which entered into force on 17 August 2026 and organises operator activity from 1 January 2027.

The official record for RP-294 identifies the measure and its entry-into-force date. Its operative provisions set consumer-protection, household-debt, transparency and financial-technology objectives for instalment services.

The operator perimeter starts with the payment mechanism

RP-294 defines an instalment-payment service as a legal entity paying a seller for goods, work or services on behalf of an individual consumer, who then repays that amount with a commission or mark-up in instalments. A seller’s direct sale to a consumer is excluded.

Legal entities providing the defined service are treated as instalment-payment operators, except banks and microfinance organisations. The right to operate arises after inclusion in a register maintained by the Central Bank. Banks and microfinance organisations enter through notification, while other legal entities require registration with the Central Bank.

The transaction flow is therefore the first classification test. A business must identify who pays the merchant, who holds the consumer receivable and whether the arrangement is a direct seller instalment or a third-party payment service. Those facts determine whether the operator regime applies and which route into the framework is available.

The resolution also brings some commodity consumer-credit providers into the framework. A non-manufacturing organisation with quarterly turnover above UZS500 million, where instalment services account for at least 50 per cent, must register and comply with operator requirements.

Contracts and customer data face hard controls

An instalment contract may cover an object worth no more than 250 times Uzbekistan’s base calculation amount. Commissions, mark-ups and other payments included in the final price must be shown separately. Beyond principal, all payments, including commissions, penalties and other liability amounts, must not exceed half of the instalment-payment amount over a year.

Consumers must be able to repay all or part of the amount early at any time without an additional fine, penalty or commission. The maximum contractual term is 12 months from signing. An arrangement extending payment for acquired goods, work or services beyond 12 months is treated as a consumer-credit agreement.

Operators may not provide financial consumer credit or take funds from individuals, apart from issuing bonds. They may assign receivables under instalment contracts only to another instalment-payment operator, a microfinance organisation or a bank.

The operating model must support four continuing controls: compliance with Central Bank prudential requirements; digital identification and verification of customers; information exchange with credit bureaus for every instalment contract and its performance; and application of the Central Bank’s maximum debt-burden ratio when deciding whether to provide the service.

The resolution gives the Competition Committee, working with the Central Bank and the National Agency for Prospective Projects, responsibility for advertising and point-of-sale controls. Advertising must not mislead consumers about commissions or mark-ups. Physical and electronic sales channels must display the base price, the instalment commission or mark-up and the full cost of credit in text of the same size.

The implementation path runs through the end of 2026

The Central Bank is responsible for regulating and supervising instalment-payment operators. It must work with other authorities to submit consequential legislative amendments within three months and a draft law regulating operator activity by 1 January 2027.

By 1 December 2026, the Central Bank and Tax Committee must develop a method for identifying commodity consumer-credit organisations that require registration. They must also propose liability for entities operating outside the register and measures for failures to provide required commodity-credit data to credit bureaus.

From 1 January 2027, commodity consumer-credit providers will not have to submit credit-bureau data for contracts worth up to three times the base calculation amount. Contracts at or above that threshold remain within the reporting architecture described by the resolution.

The immediate implementation priority is a product-and-entity map tied to dated controls. Firms must classify each instalment flow against the statutory definition, determine the applicable register route, identify contracts exceeding the value or 12-month limits, separate price components in customer documents and sales interfaces, and test whether digital identity, debt-burden and credit-bureau systems support the 2027 model.

RP-294 is already in force, but its operator framework contains a 1 January 2027 organising date and preparatory deadlines. The next technical test is whether the Central Bank and Tax Committee deliver the registration-identification method by 1 December 2026.