Uzbekistan’s development of open banking, payment infrastructure and regulatory sandboxes could create a foundation for greater interoperability between domestic and international financial systems, Sopnendu Mohanty, Co-Founder and Group CEO of the Global Finance & Technology Network (GFTN), said, Trend’s special correspondent reports from Tashkent. He made the remarks during a press briefing held as part of the Silk Road Finance & Technology Forum. According to Mohanty, interoperability should be a key element of the country’s financial technology development, allowing infrastructure developed in Uzbekistan to interact with systems in other markets, including the Middle East and Singapore.
Mohanty also addressed the evolving role of different forms of money, including central bank money, bank deposits, tokenized deposits, and stablecoins. He said the global discussion increasingly points toward wholesale central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) being used as settlement infrastructure, while the case for retail CBDCs remains less clear given the efficiency of existing payment systems. At the same time, he highlighted the potential role of tokenized bank deposits in transactions involving tokenized assets.
The money can be wholesale or could be a tokenized deposit,” Mohanty said. He also pointed to the growing adoption and regulation of stablecoins, saying they could help make cross-border payments cheaper. However, Mohanty stressed that the choice of settlement instruments should correspond to the priorities and regulatory approach of each country.
Regarding Uzbekistan’s financial sector development, he highlighted the importance of open banking and payment system interoperability, saying these two elements can help digital and legacy banks operate alongside each other. He added that payment system interoperability represents another key component, enabling money to move across markets in a more efficient manner. Mohanty also emphasized the importance of international cooperation in developing Uzbekistan’s fintech ecosystem.
He said GFTN’s role is to bring global best practices, technologies and fintech expertise to Uzbekistan while ensuring that solutions are adapted to local conditions and the regulatory framework established by the Central Bank. It’s not always necessary that you should import everything from overseas and do it here. It has to work in the local context within the framework of the central bank,” Mohanty said.
He noted that regulatory sandboxes can help test international technologies and business models before they are introduced to the wider market. So there is a need to collaborate,” Mohanty said, citing Singapore as an example of a market where collaboration has played an important role in the development of the financial technology ecosystem. Source: https://www.trend.az/casia/uzbekistan/4217611.html © 2026 Trend News Agency.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
