Uzum's Vertically Integrated Marketplace
Uzum
Uzum is building the parts that usually sit outside a marketplace, because in Uzbekistan the company that controls storage, pickup, checkout, and credit can shape the whole shopping experience and capture more of the profit pool. Instead of only matching buyers and sellers, Uzum stores goods in its own warehouses, moves orders through its own pickup network, issues its own cards, and routes a large share of transactions through its own financial stack, which lets it earn from logistics, payments, and lending on the same order.
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This looks less like a pure listing platform and more like Mercado Libre's playbook in a single country. A merchant can use Uzum for fulfillment, storefront traffic, QR acceptance in a physical shop, and installment sales, which means Uzum is embedding itself into both online and offline merchant workflows.
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The vertical buildout matters most at checkout. More than half of e commerce payments already use Uzum's own fintech instruments, and Nasiya finances nearly half of marketplace GMV, so owning the card, the loan, and the payment flow turns commerce volume into higher margin fintech revenue.
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That is a real contrast with asset light rivals. Click and Payme are strongest where payment primacy matters but avoid warehouse and pickup point investment, while Wildberries and Ozon bring strong marketplace operating playbooks but do not match Uzum's local banking and BNPL stack as tightly.
The next phase is turning this heavy infrastructure base into a wider moat. As Uzum expands pickup points toward 3,000 locations and warehouse capacity toward 500,000 square meters, the company can serve more sellers under lighter fulfillment models while keeping the highest value layers, checkout, credit, and merchant payments, inside its own system.