Google Pay officially launches in Uzbekistan
Google launched Google Pay and Google Wallet in Uzbekistan on 19 October at the C5+1 digital technologies session in Samarkand; the Central Bank is integrating Humo, Uzcard, Visa and Mastercard.
Google officially launched Google Pay and Google Wallet in Uzbekistan on 19 October 2026, during a digital technologies session held in Samarkand as part of the C5+1 format (Central Asian states and the United States).
How the service works
Users add a debit or credit card to the Google Wallet app and make contactless payments in stores, apps and on websites using NFC-enabled Android and Wear OS devices. Payments run through tokenization: the real card number is not shared with the merchant, and a virtual account number is used instead. Availability depends on each bank — every financial institution must independently enable support on its cards.
Which cards are supported
The Central Bank of Uzbekistan had earlier opened talks with Apple and Google, along with commercial banks and the national Humo and Uzcard systems, and begun technical integration. The goal is for users to be able to add Humo and Uzcard cards alongside Visa and Mastercard. Banks must undergo certification and implement tokenization standards (Mastercard MDES, Visa VTS).
The legal basis
The path opened in March 2026, when President Shavkat Mirziyoyev signed the revised Article 27¹ of the Law 'On Personal Data,' removing the requirement to store personal data only on domestic servers (with exceptions for biometric, genetic and telecom-subscriber data). This cleared the legal barrier for Apple Pay, Google Pay and PayPal.
The numbers
According to UzDaily, Uzbekistan aims to raise the share of cashless payments to 75% by 2030, and more than 100 American companies took part in the C5+1 business program. Apple Pay was not launched as part of this announcement — it was described as still in progress.
