The State Assets Management Agency today announced that it had reached a deal on the sale of the Humo card payment organization.
The 100% government stake was sold through "public invitation to negotiations" in three stages.
According to the State Asset Management Agency, six bidders were requested to send binding offers, while three made offers.
The Paynet payment system was awarded the deal after it offered $65 million.
"The buyer's offer is within the indicative prices range estimated by consultant, and also exceeds the value estimated by KPMG, an international independent appraiser," the statement said.
The buyer also committed to take steps aimed at ensuring the stable and uninterrupted operation of the Humo card payment system, as well as protecting the confidential (personal and banking) information of system users.
The deal was approved by the State Commission for Privatization and Coordination of Privatization Processes of State-Owned Assets.
Initially, Kazakhstan's Kaspi was also set to bid, but the Kazakh fintech company abandoned the move due to unknown reasons.
About Paynet
Paynet has been one of the largest fintech payment operators in Uzbekistan since it founding 18 years ago. The Paynet was founded by Botir Arifjanov in 2005. Later, he sold the company to the state represented by the Halq Bank. The operator provides payment options for more than 1,500 goods and services outlets, with monthly users number at above 20 million.
In August 2022, SAMA put up for sale the 100% stake in Uzpaynet. Over the next month, seven bids were received from potential buyers, but the acceptance of proposals was postponed under the pretext of "additional clarification".
In April, it became known that Uzpaynet, which operates the Paynet, changed it equity owner. The 100% government stake share was transferred from the State Asset Management Agency to New Industrial Technologies. The Agency did not publicly announce the privatization at the time.
New Industrial Technologies LLC was started in April 2019. In April, 60% stake in the company belonged foreign national Alex Lee (in June, he was the sole owner), 40% - Mustafa Abdurakhmanov, who also owns 77.6% of Asia Alliance Group, the majority shareholder in Asia Alliance Bank.
About Humo
The national payment system Humo was created in September 2018. It was stated then that the absence of a state-owned processing center for processing retail payments jeopardizes the security of the national payment system, does not allow for a unified integration of the payment infrastructure and leads to the dominance of the monopoly.
The Humo system appeared after a major software failure at the then only processing center Uzcard, which is a private structure.
The head of Humo, Shukhrat Kurbanov, explained that the goal of decentralizing the payment system is to prevent anyone from monopolizing the market, but, on the contrary, to enable banks to become independent.
The company's authorized capital is 155.4 billion soums. At the moment, more than 27 million Humo cards have been issued, over 210 thousand terminals and more than 6,400 ATMs have been installed.
By the November 30 presidential decree, the government stake in Humo was transferred to SAMA. In response to speculation about a possible sale. The presence of the interbank processing center on the balance sheet of the Central Bank led to a conflict of interest, SAMA stated at the time.
However, by the April 19 presidential decree, the payment system was added to the list of 247 companies in which state shares or blocks of shares must be put up for public auction.
