Evergreen guide · Updated 3 July 2026
How the region's payment rails are built: national card schemes, instant-payment systems, QR and cross-border transfers.
Payment systems are the infrastructure layer on which cards, transfers and QR rest. How the national card schemes and instant payments are arranged determines the cost of accepting payments, the speed of transfers and who controls the market's key rails.
The foundation is national card schemes and interbank processing, on top of which run instant-payment systems, QR payment, acquiring and the rules of settlement between banks. Apps, wallets and merchant services are already the upper, user-facing level.
A nice app is visible to the user, but competition is often decided by what is hidden: who owns the processing, what fees are built into the rails, how open access is for non-bank players and how fast transfers go through.
The launch and development of instant-payment systems, unified QR standards, changes in fees, access to the infrastructure for fintech players, and cross-border links between the countries of the region.
Payment infrastructure is the foundation for BNPL, embedded finance, wallets and business services. The cheaper and more open the rails, the faster new products appear on top of them.
It is a country's domestic payment system for cards and settlements between banks — for example, UzCard and Humo in Uzbekistan. It reduces dependence on external schemes and makes operations within the market cheaper.
Instant-payment systems carry out transfers between banks almost in real time and around the clock, which makes P2P and merchant scenarios faster and cheaper.
If the QR codes of different banks and wallets are compatible, paying becomes more convenient for the customer and cheaper for the business, and the market less fragmented.