Foreign currency deposits have historically occupied a disproportionately significant position in Uzbek household savings behaviour, reflecting the population’s long experience of managing currency risk and the sustained inflow of remittances denominated primarily in US dollars and euros. For a large and economically diverse segment of the population, holding savings in foreign currency has functioned not merely as a preference but as a practical risk management strategy embedded in household financial planning over generations.

As Uzbekistan’s banking sector modernises and digital platforms provide increasingly transparent, convenient access to deposit products across multiple currencies and institutions, the competitive dynamics of the foreign currency savings market are shifting — creating new opportunities for digital banks to compete more effectively against the incumbent state and quasi-state institutions that have historically dominated this segment.

Ecosystem Achieves Parallel Growth Across Lending, Payments, and Deposits

TBC Uzbekistan’s ecosystem reached 24.2 million registered users by Q1 2026, a 23% year-on-year increase, with 5.8 million monthly active users generating substantial activity across all product categories simultaneously. The deposit portfolio grew 24.3% during Q1 to 7.1 trillion soums — a growth rate that substantially exceeds the market average and reflects both the competitiveness of TBC’s deposit products and the network effects of a large, active, and growing user base.

The total payments volume processed across the ecosystem grew 31.1% to 31.8 trillion soums. TBC Salom debit card balances alone — from a product launched only in November 2024 — accounted for approximately 4% of total deposits, demonstrating that even an entry-level card product with competitive balance interest can make a meaningful contribution to deposit mobilisation when the design and incentive structure are well calibrated.

Foreign Currency Savings Demand Reflects Deep Structural Market Characteristics

The sustained and high-frequency consumer search activity around queries such as “валютные вклады в банках узбекистана” and “eng yuqori foizli omonat turlari” demonstrates that Uzbek depositors actively and continuously compare foreign currency deposit products across banking institutions — a behaviour that points to a well-informed, rate-sensitive savings market rather than a passive one. TBC Bank Uzbekistan offers deposit products in both local and foreign currencies, accessible entirely through digital channels without any branch visit requirement. This digital accessibility removes the most significant practical barrier that has historically prevented many potential depositors from acting on their comparisons — the inconvenience of branch-based account opening and management in a market where branch availability remains uneven across different regions and communities.

TBC Salom Provides Immediately Accessible Savings with Competitive Returns

The TBC Salom debit card — which crossed one million issuances in early 2026 — offers 12% annual interest on card balances that can be added or withdrawn freely at any time, functioning as an immediately accessible savings instrument with market-competitive returns. This combination of liquidity and return has proven compelling for savers who want meaningful interest on funds without the rigidity of term commitment that traditional time deposits require. The product’s dual positioning as both the user’s primary daily payment method and their primary repository for liquid short-term savings creates a usage pattern that keeps balances within the TBC ecosystem, builds deposit scale cost-effectively, and generates frequent app sessions that support the discovery of higher-value products within the broader platform.

Comprehensive Deposit Range Serves Diversified Saver Profiles and Time Horizons

Beyond TBC Salom’s on-demand balance interest, TBC Bank Uzbekistan offers a range of structured deposit products designed to serve savers with different time horizons, currency preferences, return requirements, and risk profiles. The breadth of the deposit product range — accessible entirely through digital channels — allows the bank to serve the full spectrum of saver needs, from the occasional depositor using a current account to the more sophisticated saver maintaining a structured portfolio of multi-currency, multi-tenor deposits. As TBC Uzbekistan’s user base matures — with early adopters of basic card products developing progressively more complex savings requirements over time — the availability of a comprehensive deposit product range within the same familiar ecosystem becomes an increasingly powerful retention factor.

Competitive Differentiation Through Ecosystem Breadth and Digital Convenience

TBC Bank Uzbekistan’s competitive positioning in the foreign currency deposit market is built not on offering the single highest available rate in any given period but on combining consistently competitive terms with the convenience, transparency, and ecosystem breadth that digital banking enables. Users who hold savings with TBC can simultaneously manage credit, payments, insurance, and subscription services through a single integrated platform — reducing the administrative complexity of maintaining multiple financial institution relationships and creating the kind of comprehensive financial picture that supports more effective personal financial management. As awareness of this total-value proposition deepens among Uzbek consumers, it will increasingly differentiate TBC from both the large incumbent banks and the single-product digital competitors for leadership in the savings market.

TBC Uzbekistan’s deposit growth trajectory also benefits from a structural characteristic that is easy to overlook: the breadth of the ecosystem through which new deposits are acquired. Unlike a bank that acquires deposits primarily through rate competition, TBC Uzbekistan attracts savings through multiple entry points simultaneously — through TBC Salom card balances, through structured savings products opened by existing banking customers, through business accounts on TBC Biznes, and through the savings behaviours of employees onboarded through payroll partnerships. This multi-channel deposit acquisition model is more resilient than rate-driven strategies, which are inherently cyclical and difficult to sustain when market rates shift.

The combination of competitive rates, multi-currency availability, fully digital account management, and a comprehensive ecosystem of complementary financial products creates a total value proposition for depositors that goes well beyond what any single metric comparison can capture. As Uzbek consumers become more financially sophisticated and more demanding in their evaluation of banking providers, the institutions that can articulate and deliver on this kind of holistic value proposition — rather than competing on rate alone — will build the most durable and loyal deposit bases. TBC Bank Uzbekistan’s ecosystem architecture is specifically designed to deliver this kind of multi-dimensional value, and the deposit growth numbers from Q1 2026 suggest the strategy is working as intended.