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A law overhauling the regulation of payment organisations and payment-system operators in Uzbekistan has been quietly shelved after President Shavkat Mirziyoyev returned it to parliament for reconsideration — and deputies voted to abandon it entirely rather than attempt revisions.
The lower house of the Oliy Majlis, the Legislative Chamber, had passed the legislation on 10 June 2025. The Senate approved it on 8 April 2026. The presidential veto became public on 13 October at a plenary session of the Legislative Chamber, where the Committee on Innovative Development and Information Technology presented its assessment of the head of state’s objections.
Committee member Adham Nazirqulov told the chamber that after detailed study the committee had concluded the president’s proposals were well-founded, and that it was therefore not appropriate to continue considering the law in the Legislative Chamber. The presiding officer clarified that the committee was proposing to remove the document from consideration altogether, and put a corresponding draft resolution to a vote. Deputies supported it. No questions were put to the speaker and no debate took place.
Neither the specific provisions that prompted the presidential objections nor the reasoning behind the decision to drop the law rather than amend it were disclosed at the session. It also remained unclear whether a new draft law governing the same sector would be prepared.
What the law had proposed
According to materials prepared for the Senate, the legislation was intended to tighten oversight of payment-market participants, improve payment security and strengthen consumer protection against financial fraud. It would have embedded the concepts of an “anti-fraud system” and a “virtual payment terminal” directly in statute, and set out binding requirements on information security, risk management and fraud prevention.
Among its central provisions, the law would have required all payment organisations to be incorporated exclusively as joint-stock companies, with a minimum authorised capital of 20 billion soums. Payment-system operators would have faced a higher threshold of 50 billion soums. Applicants for a licence would have been required to form that capital in full and deposit it in a bank account before filing — and would have been prohibited from using borrowed funds, pledged or otherwise encumbered assets, or money suspected of being criminally derived.
The draft also placed a ceiling on the combined stake that certain categories of non-resident investors could hold in payment organisations and operators. Non-residents falling outside the categories of international financial institutions, foreign banks, and specialised payment and credit organisations — as well as individuals subject to the relevant restrictions — would collectively have been barred from holding more than 50 percent of capital.
A further change would have stripped the Central Bank of its existing authority to set minimum authorised-capital thresholds for payment organisations and operators, on the grounds that those figures would henceforth be fixed in the law itself.
Explanatory materials accompanying the bill stated that the changes were designed to reduce the risks of financial fraud, failure to meet obligations on time, and violations of the rights of payment-service users. Which of those norms attracted the president’s conceptual objections has not been made public.