The bank said the requirement is meant to protect clients from fraudulent transactions. In its support service, one client from Russia was told that Humo Bank had decided to restrict services for certain categories of non-resident individuals who arranged cards remotely, according to Ostorozhno, Novosti.
The Russian woman opened an account at Humo Bank in April 2025, filling out a form and sending a copy of her passport. She received the notice requiring her to come to Tajikistan last week. The bank set the deadline at September 30.
Support staff advised her to withdraw her money from the account before October 1. She was unable to do so: a transfer of 300 euros last week was debited from the account but neither reached the recipient nor returned. According to the client, she has been unable to withdraw money since last week, and the support service stopped responding to her complaints. She claims her acquaintances are in the same situation, with large transfers failing to go through since Friday.
Humo Bank proposed that she come to Tajikistan, undergo identification and obtain a new card for the duration of her legal stay in the country, for a period of no more than a year. The client called the terms an ultimatum: she said the bank gave no reasonable timeframe for resolving the issue and did not explain why it was blocking transfers.
On September 18, Humo Bank said on its website that as of September 17 it had stopped opening new Sarchashma deposits in Russian rubles. The restriction applies only to the ruble version of that deposit. Whether the decision is connected to the new requirements for non-resident clients was not stated.
Humo Bank's current public offer provides for both in-person and remote identification. The latter requires a phone number, a confirmation code, a photograph of the passport and a photo of the client holding the passport.
Russians began mass-opening cards at banks in "friendly" countries after the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine, when international payment systems Visa and MasterCard left Russia. Humo Bank, founded on the basis of a microfinance organization, received a banking license in 2025. It now serves more than 300,000 clients in Tajikistan and abroad.
Earlier, the Council of the European Union added several credit institutions from Tajikistan to its sanctions list: Dushanbe City Bank, Spitamen and Kommerzbank. After that, banks in the republic began restricting transfers to cards in Russia. In the spring of 2026, the European Commission removed the Tajik banks from the sanctions list.