TBC Uzbekistan has been named among the world's leading fintech companies in the neobanking category by CNBC and Statista for the second year running. The selection is based on a data-driven assessment covering revenue growth, profitability, customer numbers, lending and deposit volumes, transaction data, market share, and staffing figures — placing TBC Uzbekistan among a select group of digital banking institutions that meet rigorous global performance benchmarks.
The consecutive inclusion carries its own signal. TBC Uzbekistan was the first company from Uzbekistan to appear in the CNBC and Statista fintech ranking when it debuted in 2025, and its return this year reflects sustained operational momentum rather than a one-off result. As frontier markets attract increasing attention from international investors and industry observers, TBC's repeated recognition positions Uzbekistan as a meaningful destination for digital financial innovation.
Ranking Criteria and What the Recognition Reflects
The CNBC and Statista methodology evaluates institutions against a multi-dimensional set of performance indicators, encompassing both financial results and operational scale. Revenue trajectory, profitability metrics, customer acquisition rates, lending portfolio growth, deposit expansion, transaction volumes, and market share are all assessed — making it a genuinely comprehensive benchmark rather than a single-metric ranking.
TBC Uzbekistan's underlying figures substantiate the recognition. The company reports more than 6 million monthly active users and holds a top-three position among financial services brands for consumers in Uzbekistan. It ranks among the country's top-10 consumer banks, commands more than 20% of the payments market, and holds a leading position in consumer credit. Notably, TBC Uzbekistan reached profitability within two years of launch — a pace it describes as a record among digital banks globally, and one that few neobanks in far more developed markets have replicated.
Consumer and Business Expansion: A Multi-Vertical Growth Model
TBC Uzbekistan's profile is defined by the scope of its operating model. The group runs consumer banking and payments through TBC UZ and Payme, while its commercial banking activities are anchored by TBC Business and BILLZ — the country's leading retail management SaaS platform. This multi-vertical structure gives TBC simultaneous exposure to growth across retail consumers, micro-enterprises, and the broader SME segment, reducing concentration risk and amplifying cross-selling potential.
TBC Business, Uzbekistan's first fully digital banking and lending solution for micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises, has grown rapidly since its launch in December 2024, attracting more than 67,000 registered business customers. Business lending now accounts for 18% of TBC Uzbekistan's total loan portfolio — a meaningful shift that reflects deliberate strategic diversification beyond the retail segment and into the commercial finance space.
For Uzbekistan's small business community, which has historically had limited access to formal credit through conventional banking channels, this represents a structural improvement in financial access. TBC Business is not simply a product expansion — it is a market-making move in a segment that traditional lenders have consistently underserved.
Consumer Credit Demand and the Digital Lending Shift
The CNBC ranking reflects a broader transformation in consumer financial behavior taking place across Uzbekistan. As mobile banking becomes the default financial interface for a growing share of the population, demand for accessible, fully digital credit products is rising consistently. Growing search volumes for services such as maqsadsiz kredit olish and потребительский кредит point to a structural shift in how Uzbek consumers seek and access financing — one characterized by speed, convenience, and the expectation of a fully remote process.
TBC Uzbekistan's consumer lending offer is designed directly around this behavioral shift. By embedding credit products within a mobile ecosystem that users engage with daily for payments, transfers, and financial management, TBC removes the friction — documentation requirements, branch visits, lengthy approval queues — that has historically placed credit out of reach for many. This design logic, applied consistently across TBC's lending portfolio, underpins its leadership position in the Uzbek consumer credit market.
AI Capability and the Platform Vision Behind Sustained Growth
A distinguishing element of TBC Uzbekistan's competitive position is the depth of its investment in proprietary artificial intelligence. The institution has built its own Uzbek-language large language models (LLMs) and Speech Technology, deployed across customer support, sales, and collections operations. These are not commercially sourced integrations — they represent a genuine and durable technical advantage developed in-house.
The most visible expression of this AI strategy is Lola, described as Central Asia's first AI banking assistant. Lola is designed to do more than answer queries: it guides users through TBC's full product ecosystem, provides personalized recommendations, and is intended to function as a connector within a two-sided platform — linking individual consumers and businesses in ways that generate incremental activity and deepen long-term engagement. The ambition is to make AI a structural feature of the platform's growth model, rather than a supplementary service layer.
Nika Kurdiani, CEO of TBC Uzbekistan, commented: "After becoming the first company in Uzbekistan to be included in this list in 2025, we are delighted to be featured once again this year. This reflects growing international interest in one of the world's fastest-growing frontier markets, as well as our ongoing market leadership and commitment to building a deep, profitable business in Uzbekistan. Over the past year, we have taken our ecosystem to the next level, scaling TBC Business to match our market-leading retail offering and transforming the customer experience through our pioneering use of AI. We are proud that this work has been recognised by CNBC and Statista, and that we continue to play an important role in putting Uzbekistan on the global agenda."
For the international fintech industry, TBC Uzbekistan's consecutive appearances in this ranking reinforce a point that is becoming harder to overlook: Uzbekistan is no longer a peripheral market story. It is emerging as a reference case for what is achievable in digital banking at frontier market scale — and TBC is the institution most clearly defining the terms of that narrative.
