President signed a decree on Nov. 30 on measures to bolster the protection of the rights of consumers of digital products and the fight against digital crimes, which inter alia ordered to transfer The national interbank processing center Humo under the jurisdiction of the State Assets Management Agency (SAMA).
The document transfers to SAMA the government’s stake (100%) in the Humo payment system, which is now owned by the Main Informatization Center of the Central Bank. The purpose of this decision is not explained.
The decree noted that cases of theft and fraud using bank cards have recently increased, which indicates “the lack of digital financial literacy of the population and the qualifications of law enforcement officers, the lack of modern crime prevention systems in banks and payment organizations, and among payment system operators ( probably means Humo and Uzcard - ed.).”
The national payment system was created in September 2018. It was then stated that the absence of a state processing center for processing retail payments undermines the level of security of the national payment system, does not allow for unified integration of the payment infrastructure and leads to the dominance of one monopoly system.
Humo appeared after a major software failure at the only processing center at that time, Uzcard, which is a private entity.
The chief of Humo, Shukhrat Kurbanov, explained that the goal of decentralizing the payment system is not to let somebody monopolize the market, but, on the contrary, to enable banks to become independent.
