Selbin Alakbarova: “We intend to collaborate with Uzbekistan in the field of fintech and financial services”
Interview for the National News Agency of Uzbekistan
From April 16 to 18, 2025, the international exhibition Banks & Business Expo was held in Tashkent.
The event brought together financial institutions and companies from more than 30 countries.
The international fintech company Simbrella, headquartered in Azerbaijan, also took part in this prestigious event for the first time.
As part of the exhibition, UzA journalists spoke with Selbin Alakbarova, head of one of the company’s departments.
The conversation focused on the significance of the exhibition, Simbrella’s international activities, and modern approaches in the field of financial technology.
– Selbin, welcome to Uzbekistan. Could you please tell us about the key areas of Simbrella’s operations and the company’s mission in the international fintech market?
– Simbrella is a company with 20 years of experience in the financial services industry.
Our products are currently available in more than 15 countries, reaching over 60 million people, primarily across Africa.
Our mission is to provide access to financial products for those who are excluded from the traditional financial system, with the goal of improving their quality of life.
For banks, it’s often difficult to serve such customer segments due to the lack of access to credit histories and the absence of suitable technological solutions to promote relevant products.
Thanks to our fintech solutions, we are successfully implementing such products in developing countries and emerging markets.
To date, we have issued over one billion loans, amounting to a total of $3.5 billion, reaching 240 million people worldwide.
– What innovative solutions are you presenting at Banks & Business Expo 2025, and how can they benefit Uzbekistan?
– As mentioned earlier, we offer financial products for people who are underserved by traditional financial institutions. One of our innovative solutions is a fully digital platform that integrates with banking systems and enables loans to be provided to customer segments that banks typically do not serve.
Our second product is SalaryNOW.
It allows clients to access a portion of their earned wages before the official payday. If a person encounters unexpected expenses, they can use this product through their banking app and receive the needed amount from their account in just seconds. At the end of the month, a recalculation is made, and the remaining salary is transferred to the client’s account.
We believe that both products could be especially relevant for Uzbekistan. In particular, SalaryNOW is already popular in the U.S. and Europe. We conducted research among users in Uzbekistan, and the overwhelming majority expressed interest in having such a feature integrated into their banking apps.
People want access to the money they’ve already earned — without turning to traditional loans or paying interest.
We hope to launch this product in Uzbekistan in the near future and share the results of its implementation during our next visit.
– What prospects for collaboration do you see with local banks and fintech companies following your participation in the exhibition?
– Since our mission is to expand access to financial services for the unbanked, we see strong prospects for collaboration in that area.
In addition, we are interested in developing microloan services. This is often a costly product for traditional banks, but with our platform and scoring solutions, we can integrate quickly and provide customers with access to personalized financial products.
I’ll emphasize again — the SalaryNOW project is particularly relevant for the local market.
Currently, there is no direct equivalent to this solution in Uzbekistan, and we are confident that we can be the first to introduce it. The conditions here are very favorable for the development of such a product, and we are hopeful for successful cooperation with local banks.