TBC Uzbekistan Rolls Out Weekend Digital Payroll and QR Payments as Business Platform Passes 30,000 Registered Companies

More than 30,000 small and medium-sized enterprises have registered on TBC Business, the digital platform launched by TBC Uzbekistan in December 2024, and the bank has used the milestone to widen what the platform can do. Alongside its first secured loans of up to 12 billion soums, about $1 million, the service now includes a payroll function that works at any hour, including weekends and public holidays, and QR-code payment acceptance for everyday trade.

The additions show how quickly a basic business account can grow into a working environment for entrepreneurs. They also show where the competition for small business clients in Uzbekistan is heading: toward daily operations, not just credit products.

Payroll that no longer waits for banking hours

Paying employees is one of the most predictable and most time-sensitive tasks for any employer. Traditional payroll processing often depends on bank working hours and batch cycles, which can delay transfers when the end of a month falls on a weekend. TBC Uzbekistan introduced a digital payroll service earlier this year that allows companies to pay staff at any time, including weekends and holidays.

For a small business, the benefit is practical. An owner of a retail shop or a service workshop does not have a finance department, and payday often falls on top of other urgent duties. Removing the dependency on opening hours lowers the administrative load and makes salaries more reliable for employees, which in a competitive labour market is itself an advantage.

QR payments and the retail counter

QR-code functionality addresses the other side of daily cash flow: how a merchant receives money. A printed or on-screen code allows a customer to pay from a phone without a card terminal at the counter. The cost of entry is low, which suits micro-businesses and market traders, and the settlement information flows directly into the same business account used for payroll.

In June 2025, the bank also acquired a majority stake in BILLZ, a retail management software platform that helps shops monitor sales and inventory. Combining payment acceptance, stock control and banking in one ecosystem gives a small trader a view of the business that previously required several separate providers.

Currency awareness in a payment-driven economy

As more businesses digitise their payments, attention to exchange rates grows. Importers, cross-border sellers and families with relatives abroad all follow currency movements closely. Frequent searches for "курс рубль" and "rubl kursi" reflect a broader shift in the market: the public now expects current rates to be available instantly and transparently in the same digital channels they use for payments. For a provider such as TBC Bank Uzbekistan, this raises the standard for information as well as for transactions, since users who pay suppliers, salaries or tuition abroad want to understand what each conversion will cost before they commit.

The link with business platforms is natural. A company that buys goods from neighbouring countries needs a clear view of rates when planning purchases, and a bank that keeps payments, accounts and currency information in a single interface can save the owner time and reduce errors.

Credit as one layer in a broader stack

The new secured loans illustrate how lending is being embedded into the platform rather than offered as a separate product. Working capital loans run for up to 36 months and investment loans for up to 120 months, with a grace period of up to 12 months and flexible collateral requirements. Before this launch, the maximum unsecured loan had already been raised from 300 million soums, about $25,000, to 600 million soums, about $50,000.

Nika Kurdiani, the chief executive, said that as businesses grow, they need larger loans to scale and fund longer-term projects such as expanding production or buying equipment and commercial real estate. The bank added that it built the product to meet that demand while preserving the simple, fully digital journey that defines its services.

The sequence is logical. Payments and payroll create daily engagement. Engagement creates data. Data supports credit decisions. And credit deepens the relationship, since a borrower who also pays staff and accepts customer payments through the same platform has strong reasons to remain.

Training and the long game

The bank complements its products with an educational programme developed together with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. It provides free practical training in business and management and is aimed at entrepreneurs who may be running their first company. Knowledge of budgeting, pricing and planning can be as valuable to a start-up as a loan, and it improves the quality of the borrowers who later approach the bank.

What it means for the market

Competition is also pushing providers to treat the quality of the app as a strategic asset. A clumsy interface, slow loading or unclear error messages can undermine even the best financial product, so engineering and design now sit alongside credit policy and marketing in the boardroom. The bank's decision to keep its technology in-house, rather than relying only on external vendors, reflects that view.

Taken together, the developments show a shift in how financial institutions in Uzbekistan compete for small companies. The key measure is no longer how many accounts a bank opens, but how many daily tasks it can take off the owner's desk. Payroll, payments, inventory and credit are becoming parts of one connected service.

Employees benefit too. Reliable payment on the agreed day, regardless of the calendar, builds trust between workers and employers, and it reduces the temptation for staff to rely on informal advances. In sectors such as retail, catering and services, where turnover is high, that reliability can support retention.

For merchants, QR acceptance also improves record-keeping. Each sale is logged automatically, which reduces cash handling, narrows the room for errors and builds the transaction history that may later support an application for credit. In this way, a tool adopted for convenience gradually becomes a financial asset for the business.

The risks are worth stating. Platforms that bundle many functions must maintain reliability, since an outage affects salaries and sales at once. Security, data protection and customer support also grow in importance as more of a company's activity moves to a single provider.

Even so, the direction is clear. With tens of thousands of companies already registered, digital business services are moving from an optional convenience to the default way small enterprises in Uzbekistan manage money.