Reform Built the Ambition; Rails, Trust and Standards Must Now Follow

The Guest of Honour at the Silk Road Finance and Technology Forum opened the day with a decade of hard numbers. Over ten years, Uzbekistan’s average annual GDP growth has held at around six to seven percent. The economy has tripled from about 60 billion to 180 billion US dollars. GDP per capita rose from roughly USD 1,900 to 4,600. Inflation fell from double digits to single digits and is expected near 6.5 percent this year. External public debt sits around 27 percent of GDP, with budget deficits kept below three percent. Uzbekistan’s national leader tied FinTech success to stable macro conditions. Going forward, the government will aim for investment-grade ratings, reduce the state's presence in the economy, and continue market-oriented reform. The session framed a modern, competitive financial system as the next reform stage.

Uzbekistan's central bank governor opened the Silk Road Finance and Technology Forum with the announcement of Uzbekistan’s National FinTech Strategy for 2026–2030, focused on innovation, proportionate regulation, modern financial infrastructure, access to talent and capital, and positioning Uzbekistan as a gateway for FinTech growth across Central Asia. The Governor spoke about Uzbekistan’s growing FinTech ecosystem and the opportunities it presents. Uzbekistan has more than thirty-eight million people, around sixty percent young, and sits at the centre of an eighty-five million region. Cashless payments already make up fifty-seven percent of the total, and women's account ownership rose from thirty-nine to sixty-one percent. He closed with announcements of the National FinTech Strategy, a Central Bank Innovation Hub, a Venture Fund, upgraded payments and sandbox policy, a 5,000 student training programme, and a forthcoming CBDC whitepaper, inviting partners to build, test, invest and train in Uzbekistan.

Uzbekistan is developing the Tashkent International Financial Centre as a gateway for international capital into its rapidly growing economy. With GDP growth reaching 7.7% last year, officials see modern financial infrastructure as critical to sustaining this momentum. The centre will operate under English common law, with an independent regulator and commercial court. It will offer foreign firms zero tax, multi-currency transactions and access to a FinTech sandbox, while remaining subject to anti-money-laundering requirements. A central bank official emphasised that greater financial openness must be anchored in macroeconomic stability and a floating exchange rate. With half the country's population under 30, the centre also places strong emphasis on talent development through a dedicated academy and the attraction of international expertise. Its five-year ambition is to attract at least $25 billion in investment and create more than 10,000 high-paying jobs. The National Investment Fund’s listing is an early indication that Uzbekistan’s capital markets can build a viable asset and wealth management business as part of the financial center. Ultimately, however, the key test will be Implementation: turning an ambitious institutional framework into a functioning international financial hub for Central Asia.

Domestic payments in Uzbekistan clear instantly today. Cross-border transfers still move slowly, through several banks, jurisdictions, checks and payment rails. When international remittances make up ~15% of Uzbekistan's GDP, 17.6% of the Kyrgyz Republic's economy and 46% of Tajikistan's, cross border payment friction becomes a structural economic issue rather than a minor inconvenience. A central bank official attributed the delay and cost to fragmented standards, differing KYC rules and foreign-exchange controls. Discussing what has worked elsewhere and provide a roadmap for the country, an India FinTech executive traced India’s UPI success to having a national digital ID, mass bank accounts and extensive mobile reach, and a crypto-bank executive urged regulation that allows on-chain money to sit beside correspondent banking, not replace it. At a time when a handful of corridors cover about 80 percent of Uzbekistan's trade and remittance, the central bank official prioritised interoperability with Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan, plus corridors to China, India, Arab states and Europe. The panellists agreed that common QR and fast-payment standards, cleaner FX settlement and direct links between national systems will be the tools that make it happen.

Uzbekistan has established a second national card system in less than five years, designed for regional and international connectivity. At the panel on trusted financial rails, speakers explored whether trust could move as quickly as money across a digital Silk Road. Panellists converged that Central Asia’s emergence as a digital economy and gateway to trade will depend on trust. Despite $50 billion in remittances, money still faces friction on its journey home. Domestic operators highlighted the role of co-badged cards, links with neighbouring markets and lower-cost digital wallets to support small-value trade. A cross-border payments executive cautioned emerging-market regulators against importing rulebooks designed for established financial centres. An infrastructure investor noted that payment rails remain difficult to fund until demand is proven and transactions captured. On stablecoins, one executive predicted greater outflow from Central Asia than inflows. The central question is whether these rails can become fast, affordable and trusted enough for participation.

A debate among regulators from Pakistan, Cambodia and Azerbaijan exposed a central dilemma for digital finance: regulate too early and risk stifling innovation and investment; regulate too late and risk systemic vulnerabilities. Pakistan’s digital-assets chair argued that eight years of prohibition still produced the world’s third-largest digital-asset market, before the country passed its Virtual Assets Act 2026 and established a dedicated regulator. Pakistan is now testing tokenisation and plans to tokenise US$2 billion of debt. Cambodia took a different path, building Bakong, its blockchain-based payment infrastructure, ahead of virtual-asset regulation. Azerbaijan similarly emphasised allowing regulation to respond to genuine economic needs rather than technology trends. Despite different approaches, the regulators converged on one principle: regulation must ultimately preserve trust while enabling innovation. Looking towards 2030, tokenised debt, stablecoins, agentic payments and AI-enabled regulatory agents could fundamentally reshape capital markets, payments and supervision.

Uzbekistan is developing a wholesale CBDC as a trust layer for privately issued stablecoins, with licensed institutions managing retail relationships. A Central Bank official said the model would first be tested through a regulatory sandbox with the National Agency of Prospective Projects before wider rollout, balancing innovation with public trust and regulatory oversight. The discussion pointed to a broader shift from faster payments to more productive digital finance. While remittance costs in the region have already fallen significantly, programmable money could automatically direct funds towards savings, expenses and credit histories. Industry leaders also highlighted the gap between investment and implementation: 88% of institutions are budgeting for digital-asset infrastructure, but only 15–16% of Asia-Pacific initiatives have reached meaningful production. Banks supported coexistence between deposits and tokenised money, while founders stressed that scaling will depend on clear regulation, shared standards, custody, clearing and legal finality.

Uzbekistan’s regulatory reform story is starting to translate into attracting global capital. The National Investment Fund’s London-Tashkent dual listing raised US$692 million against more than US$2.9 billion in demand, with shares rising over 50% since May and trading at roughly a 10% premium to net asset value. The CBU’s new US$50 million venture fund was highlighted as a powerful signal to private capital, supporting Uzbekistan’s ambition to attract US$1 billion into FinTech. A Central Bank official pledged to bring inflation to 5% next year, maintain a floating exchange rate and gradually open the capital account. Banking reform is also advancing, with state ownership falling from 85% to around 60% under a Basel III and IFRS roadmap. Investors stressed the importance of growth, predictability and continued reform. With digital-payment adoption above 70%, around 100 FinTech startups, and an average age of 29, Uzbekistan has strong foundations for growth. Energy capacity and market liberalisation remain critical to achieve the potential of the country's FinTech ambition.

Opening the second day, the Innovation Day, H.E. Nodirbek Saydullayev, First Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank of the Republic of Uzbekistan, set out a clear mandate: to establish Uzbekistan as a FinTech hub that creates financial products at home and then expands into regional and global markets. Recognising that technology's value is measured in outcomes, such as faster, more convenient and more accessible financial services, Uzbekistan's national FinTech strategy focuses on innovation by expanding regulatory sandbox, targeted innovation-support mechanisms, and modern payment rails underpinning open finance. Talent, however, will be the decisive factor to achieve the country’s goals and Uzbekistan has committed to training 5,000 young FinTech specialists by 2030, anchoring a hub built to compete regionally and globally. As AI adoption accelerates, the central bank will treat security and innovation as complementary functions to progress together, not in tension, and is committed to open dialogue, responsible technology use and deeper international cooperation on shared rails.

Dr. Patrick Njoroge, former Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya noted that networks leapfrog nations only when digital public infrastructure is built first. He set out four critical pillars: verifiable digital identity, low-cost real-time interoperable payments, consent mechanism with guardrails, and consent-based data exchange. An example is Kenya's mobile government-securities platform, which took five years to build and gave ordinary citizens a paperless, secure savings channel. Encouraging countries to adopt global benchmarks rather than reinvent the wheel, he laid out three tests that should frame frontier technology: people-centric design, technical resilience, and public-private cooperation. He also warned about risks, such as financial-stability, fraud, and illicit-flow risks with stablecoins, conflicting US and EU rules with potential spill over into other jurisdictions, and capital-expenditure bubbles, hallucination, bias, privacy harms, and concentrated power linked to AI. The solutions will require global coordination on conflicting rules and urgent AI governance.

A Central Bank official from China argued that on-chain value could inflate real economic use, citing a monitoring scan of 16 public chains which found that genuine payment activity accounted for only 1% of roughly US$60 trillion in on-chain transfers last year. A Central Bank official from Uzbekistan countered citing Uzbekistan’s own strong remittance record, delivering US$9.3 billion in first-half remittances with over half going straight to bank cards. Panellists agreed that the right model depends on context, jurisdictions with capital controls favoured central bank digital currencies while liquid markets favoured private stablecoins. When asked for a wish list to conclude the session, central bankers asked for better data and reserve transparency from private sector while those in the industry called for anchoring innovation within a real problem, to be solved jointly with regulators.

Dr. Veerathai Santiprabhob, former Governor of the Bank of Thailand, argued that digital financial transformation is not a technology project, since technology is often the easiest part to obtain. He judges public infrastructure against five dimensions: productivity, inclusivity, immunity, adaptability and integrity. By that standard Thailand's 2016 system fell short, recording only 60 electronic payments per person a year, while collateral-based lending shut households and SMEs out of formal credit and migrant workers paid close to 10% to send money home. The central bank, government, banking industry and FinTech community responded together with PromptPay, an instant payment system with no transaction fee, a national QR code standard, open payment standards, digital ID and a new Payment Systems Act. Electronic payments passed 650 per person a year and mobile banking grew more than 25 times. He set out four lessons: mindset change across every stakeholder, guiding principles agreed early, incentives that keep competition alive, and proper governance.

The session began with a case study about a young Samarkand entrepreneur, whose loan-application is rejected by a bank’s AI without a clear reason. This provided the anchoring question for the panel - whether banks, regulators and countries can trust the systems that drive AI decisions and which part of the stack spanning customer data, external models, offshore cloud and supplier contracts is most critical. Views split on which layer needs first attention when the goal is real operational trust. Some panellists flagged the importance of data, as errors there pass into every layer above. Banks must own data, decision logs and governance even when models or cloud sit elsewhere. A central bank official flagged lack of control as the core risk, along with the risk of black-box credit models. The panel agreed that lenders cannot outsource responsibility for AI-driven outcomes and urged starting from shared principles and policy, built in parallel so rigid rules do not freeze progress. The panel concluded with the need for customer data, evidence trails and exit options to stay onshore, prior to scaling AI-driven credit decisions.

Digital payment adoption in Uzbekistan surged from 39% in 2021 to 72% in 2025. Cybercrime cases, however, also rose from 4,800 to over 62,000 in five years. Total admitted losses have also surged, with more than half recorded in 2025 alone. A payment rail provider noted that globally the weakest link in this chain remains the human with social engineering, deepfakes and phishing now taking only minutes. A commercial bank chief said first-time users lack basic security and data-protection knowledge, shifting disproportionate responsibility onto commercial banks that must catch client mistakes inside their own systems. Uzbekistan’s Central Bank is shifting from compliance-based rules to risk-based supervision of cyber threats. It plans to launch a cybersecurity framework with four maturity levels for banks next year. The panellists agreed that real-time collaboration is the single capability the sector must build within the next twelve months.

The panel explored what open finance truly depends on – rules, rails or capital. A FinTech executive held that rules must come first, since without regulation, rails and capital cannot move while a FinTech founder held that infrastructure needs to exist before rules can meaningfully take shape. An Industry Association executive argued that Central Asia's five markets need shared rails and mutually recognised standards more than identical laws. A Central Bank official however, rejected the binary: capital, rules and infrastructure only create real value when they operate together, with interoperability as the true underlying constraint. Uzbekistan's national FinTech strategy for 2026-2030 centres on a payment switch, cloud infrastructure and consent-based open banking, with rules designed to let business models compete safely. Panellists called for a layered model where connectivity comes first, enabling embedded finance and eventually open finance on top. A banking executive observed that data sharing still raises real security and consent concerns. The panel highlighted that investable markets start with ambitious founders and returning diaspora, not dominant local incumbents alone and agreed that AI, cybersecurity and new business models will dominate the next year of growth in the region.

Last-mile micro-enterprises often lack collateral and credit histories, leaving traditional banks reluctant to lend. Most panellists held that embedded rails have moved the needle on both breadth and depth of access. A digital bank embedded within a marketplace is already using live merchant turnover data to price loans for more than 10,000 sellers. A leading payments platform, with over 24 million registered clients and 80,000 businesses is extending services into remote areas. A FinTech Founder highlighted how open finance enabled 500,000 new accounts to be opened within six months through everyday apps in the Philippines. A Financial Services executive noted that alternative data can establish creditworthiness where conventional assets cannot. A Central Bank official however, framed the most challenging question, asking the room to look beyond access: embedded finance is expanding reach, but usage, quality and transparency continue to lag. The regulator also flagged low formal savings and called for more accessible savings products. In a blue-ocean market, incentives and open data will determine whether capital truly reaches the hardest-to-serve communities.

The final panel of the day stress-tested Uzbekistan's goal of training 5,000 FinTech specialists by 2030. A Central Bank official identified training as the single greatest constraint in meeting this ambition, ahead of both the funding for this training and ensuring retention of the trained individuals. The official stressed applied skill, not classroom STEM alone, as the real gap that firms face. A FinTech executive countered that retention is what makes any training investment pay off, while an academic and research leader warned that FinTech talent is portable and leaves without clear career paths. The head of the Presidential Human Capital Foundation refused any split of the pipeline. Forecasting, training and retention sit on one path, and the national target means 5,000 career jobs not certificates. The room closed with a live call for at least six mentors to guide young Uzbek talent for a year and return to the stage next year to show what sustained guidance can produce.

Day three of the Silk Road Finance and Technology Forum opened in Tashkent under a 65-metre dome at the Islamic Civilization Center. The hosts framed a digital Islamic finance road on old geography, where a mesh of routes moved value hand to hand with no single owner for roughly 1,500 years. Value passed hand to hand across dozens of borders on shared standards with no single owner. A sakk let a Baghdad merchant put gold down in Baghdad and draw its value in Cairo or Samarkand. Scholars trace both sukuk and the cheque to that root before Europe issued its first cheque. Eight weeks ago, Uzbekistan's Islamic banking law came into force putting Shariah-compliant finance on the same footing as conventional finance for the first time. A $50 million venture fund, a target of 200 FinTechs, and a presidential mandate now back the shift. The session set the scene for the day: the charter, the rails, the cargo, and founders with capital.

Opening the Azimuth Day, the final day of the Forum, the Governor of the Central Bank of the Republic of Uzbekistan, H.E. Timur Ishtemov, set out the sovereign case for Islamic Finance. Uzbekistan announced its Islamic finance national strategy eight weeks before the Forum, with a new law taking effect on 29 June, placing Shariah-compliant institutions on equal legal footing with conventional banks. The Central Bank gained an Islamic Finance Council, and sukuk received tax neutrality. The Governor called upon the Presidential announcement of a sovereign sukuk program aimed at diversifying investment flows and drawing at least $10 billion in additional investment for Uzbek enterprises. This sits within a three-stage national plan to build a full Islamic finance architecture, progressing from Islamic microfinance to banking to capital markets. A 2026–2030 roadmap with the IFSB holds 39 action items across five themes. Draft capital-market rules for sovereign and corporate sukuk have passed first reading. Twelve microfinance organisations already offer Islamic contracts, and a new banking licence covers full Islamic banks and windows.

The common assumption is that demand holds Islamic finance back; the room argued that the bigger challenge is infrastructure. Conventional finance already moves trillions daily across instant, interoperable payment rails that Islamic finance still lacks. Nearly 500 Islamic FinTech firms operate across 41 countries, yet 80% are concentrated in just ten markets. Global Islamic finance reached about $3.9 trillion in 2024 and is projected to grow roughly 15% annually. India’s UPI, meanwhile, scaled from zero to more than 20 billion monthly transactions in less than a decade, demonstrating what is possible at both speed and scale. Panellists identified legal frameworks, Shariah governance and a common national payment standard as priorities, ahead of liquidity or deposit insurance. A Philippine Central Bank official called for licensing a pilot Islamic bank within twelve months rather than waiting for perfection. A Shariah chair stressed that digital tools cannot replace Ijtihad, making human capital equally critical. The challenge is not whether the rails can be built, but who builds them, to what standard, and in what sequence.

Uzbekistan now has the law, the mandate and the ambition for Islamic digital finance. Sovereign intent, however, holds only when prudential foundations sit firm: supervision, risk architecture and liquidity. The IFSB Secretary-General pushed for standards before scale, arguing that getting those right helps avoid spending a decade retrofitting trust after something breaks. Islamic finance reached 4.2 trillion dollars in global assets by the end of last year. Banking still accounts for close to 70 percent of global Islamic assets, while capital markets and Sukuk lack depth. Hybrid risks rise as Islamic bank balance sheets take on conventional attributes and higher gearing. Technology must redesign market structures for Islamic needs, not copy old frictions in digital form. Conventional banking needed almost thirty years and a global crisis to write its rulebook. Islamic finance must get the foundations right for sound growth without embedding vulnerabilities as the system evolves.

A national Islamic finance strategy is only half the work of building a real market. Capacity in institutions, supervisors and the workforce rarely exists the day a plan is signed. Human capital must be built to cover public financial literacy, upskilling and reskilling the central bankers, regulators and policymakers, and institutions that deliver the product. Turkey published its first participation finance strategy in 2022 and took lessons over time. Egypt has built Islamic finance infrastructure over decades across its financial system. Both countries show that sequencing matters as much as ambition from the start. An Islamic finance strategy needs local knowledge, step-by-step action and demand-side priority to succeed. Price friction and weak literacy still divert many clients toward conventional banking products. The session highlighted the need to build the tools to upskill human capital, create public or blockchain-based infrastructure to cut the compliance-verification cost, and treat Islamic finance not as a divide from conventional banking but simply as a new set of products with new features that consumers will accept on their merits

The last mile already has a phone, yet financial inclusion still lags. The World Bank’s Global Findex 2025 counts 1.3 billion adults without a financial account, despite the phone already reaching most of the world's remaining unbanked. Around 900 million already own a phone, while more than 500 million have smartphones. Half of the world’s unbanked population lives in just eight economies, five of them OIC member states. The real frontier is Shariah-compliant credit for thin-file borrowers who lack collateral or formal income. A Science study found that Kenya’s mobile money expansion lifted 194,000 households, about 2% of the country, out of extreme poverty. The lesson is clear: access alone does not constitute meaningful inclusion for vulnerable communities. Trust must be built through habitual use, fair pricing and products designed around real daily needs. Panellists called for simpler basic financial products, alternative-data underwriting and deeper collaboration among banks, fintechs and regulators to turn digital access into sustained, inclusive financial participation.

Almost no hands rose when the room was asked whether AI should approve a routine murabaha credit sale. Confidence fell further when the question shifted to AI approving any new Islamic finance product. The panel was clear: AI cannot replace muftis or Shariah boards and must never issue fatwas. Islamic jurisprudence blends settled rules with ongoing scholarly interpretation across the major schools and markets. While technology can handle clearly defined, machine-readable controls, supporting research, audit testing, document-heavy processes and compliance checks, human judgment remains essential for interpreting intent, handling exceptions and exemptions, and delivering final Shariah rulings. The principle is simple: even a 99% confidence score is insufficient if one Shariah condition is breached. Every decision must ultimately have a named human principal who owns it, because AI carries neither accountability nor responsibility. AAOIFI has begun developing governance standards for AI in Islamic finance, with an exposure draft expected in 2027.

The room opened debating a $2.1 trillion gap in how large global Islamic finance really is. One major data provider sized 2024 sector assets at about $6 trillion. The Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB), using regulators' returns, put it at $3.9 trillion the same year. Most of that gap is from Iranian banking assets, about $2.15 to $2.2 trillion, included by one side and excluded by the other. Panellists, however, agreed that sukuk has crossed $1 trillion, with growth increasingly coming from Central Asia and Africa. Panellists also stressed that the industry is not homogeneous across markets, and what may count as acceptable Islamic finance in Malaysia is often not acceptable in Saudi Arabia or the UAE. Investor confidence depends on shared product definitions, IFSB risk buckets, common standards, and independent checks on asset backing. For new markets such as Uzbekistan, the practical step would be early sukuk issuance to create a track record that investors can trust.

Two institutions put their names to a pioneering expression of intent in Tashkent. The Central Bank of the Republic of Uzbekistan and GFTN set a shared course for an Islamic digital economy. That economy is meant to stay open across borders, trusted by communities, powered by new tools, and open to all. The pact names two concrete areas to explore together from day one. First is a cross-border regulatory sandbox framework with open standards and shared reference tools. Second is a coordinated effort to support customer education across markets. Leaders cast the signing as a starting line anchored in Tashkent. Policymakers and regulators from across the region and the wider world stood as witnesses on stage. The host closed the full day by fixing a new digital Silk Road on true north.