Since August 9, the country’s commercial banks have been operating under new internal control rules. The regulator sharply lowered monitoring thresholds for retail transfers, corporate imports, and cash withdrawals, directly affecting payment speeds.
What happened
An updated internal control regulation for commercial banks took effect in Uzbekistan. The document revises the limits at which financial transactions are classified as suspicious or require in-depth verification under anti-money laundering (AML/CFT) rules.
As reported by the specialized channel Uzbek Fintech, the new procedure divides transactions into several categories with different compliance system trigger thresholds:
- Standard transactions: The limit is set at 175 million soums (about $16,500). Above this amount, banks must request documentary proof of the funds’ legal origin and the transaction’s purpose.
- Minors’ accounts: Any deposit or withdrawal over 16.5 million soums on children’s cards is now officially considered a sign of suspicious activity.
- Everyday transfers: For transactions starting at 10.3 million soums (25 basic calculation values), banks must transmit an expanded data package. The system captures the personal identification number of a natural person (PINFL) and the settlement account numbers of the sender and receiver.
- Cash withdrawals: Cashing out foreign currency from other banks’ cards for amounts over 206 million soums (500 BCV) is subject to mandatory verification.
- International transfers: Transactions over 412 million soums fall under enhanced supervision if linked to high-risk jurisdictions.
In the corporate sector, changes affected foreign trade control. The monitoring threshold for changes in import contracts dropped more than fourfold — from 8.24 billion to 2 billion soums. Any adjustments to supply contracts above this amount will be tracked to prevent unjustified price inflation.
Country and market
Uzbekistan is consistently securing its financial safety perimeters and implementing strict capital transparency standards. Finteqstan previously reported that the Central Bank mandated the localization of clients' biometric data; now the regulator has shifted focus to cash flows.
Lowering monitoring thresholds means a significantly larger volume of daily transactions will face manual or semi-automatic checks. This poses an infrastructure challenge for the banking sector: compliance departments will have to process a multiplied flow of supporting documents.
Why it matters
Stricter rules directly impact the customer experience. The need to provide contracts, income statements, or invoices for transfers over 175 million soums will inevitably slow down legal payments.
In the retail segment, collecting PINFLs for transfers over 10.3 million soums makes the P2P market completely transparent to supervisory authorities. This aligns with the broader state logic of bringing the economy out of the shadows but creates friction for users accustomed to instant settlements.
What’s next
In the coming months, banks will need to reconfigure automatic scoring algorithms to minimize manual labor during document verification.
The sharp drop in limits will shift the operational burden to compliance departments and may spur user demand for alternative fintech payment channels if traditional banks fail to ensure fast verifications.
