Google Pay has launched in Uzbekistan, while Apple Pay is expected to follow in the coming days, the Tourism Committee’s press service reported.
Technical integration of Apple Pay is being carried out by the Central Bank, commercial banks and payment systems Humo and Uzcard.
The agency said the launch of international payment services should make transactions easier for foreign tourists and reduce their reliance on cash and international bank cards.
In August, the Alipay+ payment gateway launched on Humo’s infrastructure. It allows Alipay users and users of connected digital wallets, particularly tourists from China, to pay for purchases in Uzbekistan using UzQR codes.
Humo and India’s NPCI International are also discussing the integration of UzQR with the UPI payment system, which would allow Indian tourists to pay using their usual apps.
Google Pay and Apple Pay Launch
On October 19, Google announced the launch of Google Pay in Uzbekistan. The announcement was made by Marcin Krasuski, Google Cloud’s Director of Government Affairs and Public Policy for Central and Eastern Europe, during a panel session on digital technologies held in Samarkand as part of the C5+1 events involving Central Asian countries and the United States.
In late July, Jamshid Usmanov, head of the Central Bank’s Payment Systems Development Department, told Spot in an interview that Google Pay and Apple Pay could launch in Uzbekistan in the coming months. He said that after changes to personal data legislation, the Central Bank, commercial banks, Humo and Uzcard began negotiations with Apple and Google and started technical integration of the services. Banks were also working on card tokenisation to enable users to add cards from national payment systems as well as Visa and Mastercard to the services.
On March 26, the president signed a law abolishing the requirement to store all personal data on servers inside Uzbekistan. The restriction remains in place for biometric and genetic data, as well as telecommunications subscribers' data. Other personal data may be processed abroad, subject to established conditions.
The English version of this material was generated with the assistance of AI translation tools and may differ slightly from the original text.
