Automatic payment monitoring will launch in the country in September 2026: the regulator will lower the rate for legal businesses but start tracking shadow activity by transaction volume.
What happened
The Agency of Innovations and Digital Technologies of Tajikistan, together with the National Bank, announced the launch of a pilot project on the taxation of e-wallet transactions. The new rules will take effect on September 1, 2026.
The regulator is implementing an automatic filter. If a person receives more than 80 transfers from different senders in a month, the system flags this activity as commercial and transmits the data to tax authorities. Regular transfers to family and friends are not subject to the tax, the Asia-Plus publication clarifies, citing the agencies.
For officially registered individual entrepreneurs, the conditions are being softened. The tax rate when accepting payments to a wallet is halved — from 6% to 3%. The calculation will occur automatically, and the buyer will receive 1% cashback on the amount to stimulate cashless payments.
Country and market
Tajikistan. Local e-wallets have long remained a convenient gray area for microbusinesses. Sellers accepted payments by phone number as ordinary individuals, avoiding taxes and acquiring fees.
Why it matters
The state is changing its approach to bringing the market out of the shadows. Instead of strict bans, the regulator offers a compromise: legal operation via wallets becomes cheaper due to a reduced rate, while hiding becomes harder due to automatic monitoring. For the fintech market, this means a transition to a more mature infrastructure where payment apps take on the functions of tax agents.
What’s next
Before September, banks and wallet operators will have to configure their algorithms. They need to learn how to accurately count unique senders, automatically withhold the 3% tax, and credit cashback. The practical effect will depend on how smoothly the integration of banking systems with the tax committee’s databases goes and whether erroneous blocks of regular users can be avoided at the start.