Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- The National Interbank Processing Center (NMPC) and the global payment technology company Visa announced the cancellation of the fee for Visa card holders to pay for goods and services in the national payment system HUMO.

Visa supports the Government of Uzbekistan in an effort to create favorable conditions for the growth of cashless payments in the country. Following this vision, Visa and the Central Bank of Uzbekistan signed a Memorandum of Understanding and Cooperation in order to jointly expand the infrastructure for receiving electronic payments, as well as improve the legislative framework in the field of cashless payments.

Aliya Chynybaeva, Visa Regional Manager for Central Asia, comments: “We highly appreciate the possibility of partnership with HUMO and the support of the Central Bank of Uzbekistan for our efforts to ensure that as many consumers and trade and service enterprises as possible can take advantage of modern electronic payments. Over the past year, we have made significant progress by opening Visa cards at 2,800 ATMs and 185,000 POS-terminals in the country. In cooperation with our partners in Uzbekistan, we systematically worked to cancel the additional commission for consumers when paying with cards in trade and service enterprises, as this is one of the key factors that impedes the full development of non-cash payments in the country and undermines consumer confidence in them. Today, we are pleased to announce that our efforts have been successful. From now on, when paying with Visa cards issued by banks of Uzbekistan, consumers will pay exclusively for the cost of goods and services without any additional fees.”

“Today’s decision is another important step towards the development of the ecosystem of cashless payments in Uzbekistan. This will speed up the process of integrating Uzbekistan into the global economy, give an additional incentive to tourism and economic growth, and for local enterprises it will open up more opportunities for business development and improving the quality of customer service, which will be able to take full advantage of non-cash Visa payments,” said Shukhratbek Kurbanov, director of the NMPC.

The NMPC together with Visa launched the acceptance of payments on international Visa cards in the HUMO system on 18 December 2019.