How does a Korti Milli payment work?
Korti Milli cards are issued by Tajik banks and other credit institutions, and the National Bank of Tajikistan’s register lists the state savings bank Amonatbonk as the licensed company running the Korti Milli payment system. The shopper chooses to pay by card, enters the card number, expiry date and the three-digit CVV2 code on the back of the card, and the acquiring bank authorises the payment with the issuer. Alif describes the CVV2 as the code used to verify online transactions.
Korti Milli is a domestic scheme. Alif says its Korti Milli card can be used to pay for goods and services and to shop online inside the country, but not abroad or on foreign websites, and points customers who need that to its Visa and Mastercard cards. Some banks issue cards co-badged with Korti Milli and Express Pay or UnionPay. For pay-outs, a provider can credit a Korti Milli debit card by card number; PayerMax lists Korti Milli next to Visa and Mastercard for debit card disbursements in Tajikistan.
Why does Korti Milli matter for merchants?
It is the card most Tajik customers hold. On 30 June 2025, according to National Bank data reported by Trend, Korti Milli cards made up 51.6% of the 9.1 million bank cards in circulation, cards co-badged with Korti Milli and Express Pay or UnionPay another 20.7%, Visa 15.3% and Mastercard 5.2%. The total card base has kept growing since: the National Bank counted 12.4 million bank payment cards on 30 June 2026, up 35.4% in a year.
Cashless use is growing with it. In the first half of 2026, cards and e-wallets carried 152 million non-cash transactions worth TJS 38.3 billion and 41% of payments for goods and services, according to the National Bank. Korti Milli also underpins local online payments: Alif joined the national processing centre and began issuing Korti Milli cards in March 2017, and its Alif Pay service, launched that November, was the first platform for paying local online services with a Korti Milli card.
What can go wrong?
The main limit is reach. Korti Milli works inside Tajikistan, so a merchant contracting through a foreign acquirer cannot accept it. The payment needs a provider with a Tajik acquiring connection.
Ordinary declines also apply: insufficient funds, a mistyped card number or CVV2, and limits set by the issuing bank. A retry minutes later will not fix those, so the checkout should offer another method, such as an international card or a bank wallet. Pay-outs fail when the card number is wrong or the card is closed or blocked, and a card pay-out cannot be pulled back once it has been credited.
Refunds go back through the acquiring bank that processed the payment, so merchants should confirm refund timing with that bank. Because Korti Milli is a domestic scheme, disputes do not run through an international chargeback programme. Check the dispute process in the acquiring agreement.
How would Omno handle Korti Milli?
With Omno, a merchant would connect once and set routing rules per method, currency and customer group. Korti Milli pay-ins would be routed to a provider with local acquiring in Tajikistan, with the scheme detected from the card number so domestic and international cards can take different routes. Routing rules set by the merchant would choose the provider, and if a provider is unavailable or rejects the request, the payment would move to the next provider in the rule until one accepts. Pay-outs to Korti Milli cards would use the same API as pay-ins, with eligibility rules that can limit them to cards the customer has already paid with. Webhooks would report the final status of every payment, and the routing-decision log would show which provider handled each step.