The Central Bank of Uzbekistan Clarifies Rules for Handling ATM Failure Complaints

The CBU’s letter lists specific scenarios that now receive the status of priority requests. These include funds being debited without cash being dispensed, the machine retaining a card, heavily delayed refunds, and fees charged for a failed transaction.

How banks should act

The document contains a series of instructions and recommendations for changing internal processes. According to the letter, a bank should not summon a customer back to the office if a technical failure can be confirmed by internal data—transaction logs, video recordings, or cash collection reports.

Customers must be provided with a request number and a clear timeframe for its resolution. Furthermore, the fee for an unexecuted transaction must be refunded simultaneously with the principal amount or automatically.

Another requirement concerns communication. The regulator specifies that customers must receive consistent and clear answers about the status of their problem regardless of the channel used—whether through the call center, mobile app, or a bank branch.

The CBU also drew attention to the technical side of the infrastructure. Banks are advised to monitor equipment functionality, ensure an uninterrupted power supply, and replace outdated devices. Special attention is mandated for outdoor ATMs and machines that receive the most complaints.

Why it matters

ATMs remain a critical part of Uzbekistan’s payment infrastructure, especially outside major cities where the demand for cash is traditionally high. Prolonging refund processing times during failures directly reduces public trust in cashless payments.

In neighboring Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, disputes over ATM transactions are most often regulated by the standard rules of international or local payment systems. The chargeback or interbank investigation procedure there can take anywhere from a few days to several weeks. The Uzbek regulator’s initiative is aimed at shortening this bureaucratic cycle domestically.

The transition from formal complaint logging to a refund time metric forces banks to rebuild their internal operational processes.

What’s next

The CBU’s letter is addressed to commercial banks, payment organizations, and payment system operators. The regulator urged market participants to take prompt measures to improve the quality of ATM operations.

The public summary of the document does not specify concrete fines for non-compliance with the recommendations or exact refund timeframes in hours. Future dynamics will depend on how the CBU monitors the execution of these instructions in practice.