Uzbekistan bids to become Central Asia's fintech gateway

Tashkent's Silk Road Forum draws 6,000 delegates as Uzbekistan converts regulatory reform into a pitch for global Islamic and digital-finance capital.

By Disrupts Editorial Team Sat, 29 August 2026

A modern building with reflective glass walls and white concrete elements stands in a desert landscape with sand dunes, surrounded by a terraced garden and water features under bright daylight.

The Central Bank of the Republic of Uzbekistan and Singapore-headquartered Global Finance and Technology Network (GFTN) convened the inaugural Silk Road Finance and Technology Forum in Tashkent on 24–26 August 2026, drawing more than 6,000 participants from 74 countries. Co-hosted by Ant International, the three-day event positioned Uzbekistan as a cross-border capital corridor connecting Central Asia to the Gulf, South Asia, Southeast Asia and beyond, a claim backed by a clutch of recent regulatory moves that organisers say are now ready to attract institutional money.

The forum's timing is deliberate. Presidential Decree PQ-359 and Uzbekistan's National FinTech Strategy have advanced open banking, digital payments and API interoperability over the past two years. Most significantly, a new Islamic banking law came into force in June 2026, creating the country's first legal framework for Shariah-compliant banking. The release of that law is designed to open a channel to global Islamic finance assets, which the sector estimates at approaching six trillion US dollars, concentrated largely in the Gulf Cooperation Council, Malaysia, Türkiye and Pakistan.

Turning Reform into Investment Rails

Central Bank Governor Timur Ishmetov used his opening address to issue what amounted to a direct sovereign pitch to the international capital community. "Uzbekistan is open to investment, technology, expertise and long-term partnerships. Build here. Test new solutions here. Invest here," he said, framing the forum's ambition in terms of converting political commitment into bankable infrastructure.

GFTN Group CEO Sopnendu Mohanty, who previously led fintech policy at the Monetary Authority of Singapore, distilled the challenge more precisely: the ingredients for a digital-finance gateway exist, but the country must now translate those foundations into "investment, international partnerships and financial corridors that connect Central Asia to the world." That framing matters: reform momentum is necessary but insufficient; the harder task is market depth, liquidity and credible exit pathways for foreign investors.

The forum's five strategic themes reflect where the gaps remain: digital payments and infrastructure; Islamic finance and new corridors; AI and emerging technology; tokenisation and digital assets; and cross-border finance and regulation. The third day, branded The Azimuth, moved to Tashkent's Islamic Civilisation Centre and focused specifically on the standards, Shariah governance and digital infrastructure required to scale Islamic finance across borders.

The Convergence Angle: Where Capital, Infrastructure and Geopolitics Collide

For cross-sector investors, Uzbekistan's push is most interesting as a case study in the post-globalisation redrawing of financial geography. Central Asia's relatively underdeveloped financial infrastructure is, paradoxically, an advantage: it creates room to build interoperable payment rails from scratch rather than retrofitting legacy systems. That mirrors the playbook Gulf states used a decade ago to leapfrog traditional banking infrastructure, and it is now attracting similar sovereign and institutional attention.

The Islamic finance dimension adds a second convergence layer. With Gulf sovereign wealth funds actively diversifying into frontier and emerging markets, and with South Asian remittance corridors representing some of the world's highest-volume and highest-cost payment flows, a Shariah-compliant digital-infrastructure corridor through Central Asia would serve both capital deployment and cost-reduction objectives simultaneously. Uzbekistan's geographic position, bordering Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, gives it potential as a hub rather than a terminus.

Tokenisation and digital assets featured prominently on the agenda, reflecting a broader global pattern in which emerging-market regulators are moving faster than their G7 counterparts to establish legal frameworks for digital money and asset tokenisation. Whether Uzbekistan can translate forum attendance into binding capital commitments will depend on the governance and liquidity infrastructure that follows, but the macro signal is clear: Central Asia is actively competing for the financial-innovation mandates that Singapore, Dubai and Abu Dhabi have spent a decade accumulating.