This article is written by Accion and MayaSoft and originally published by Mastercard Strive. In partnership with Mastercard Strive, this program provides micro and small enterprises in Uzbekistan with an enhanced solution for card acquiring called MARTA.

Olesya Stefanko runs a handmade soap shop in one of Tashkent’s busy indoor markets. For several years, she accepted card payments from customers on two traditional point-of-sale (POS) terminals provided by her bank. While she appreciated the ability to accept card payments, she frequently encountered minor but frustrating issues. For example, the devices needed frequent charging, and she often forgot to plug them in during the busiest moments of the day. This resulted in occasional delays and awkward situations with customers waiting to pay.

Recently, Olesya switched to MayaSoft’s MARTA Soft POS. MayaSoft is a licensed payment organization in Uzbekistan that enables small retailers like Olesya to easily process payments quickly and securely anytime, anywhere. She downloaded the app to her smartphone and opened her account remotely from her shop. Since her phone is always charged, she no longer faces interruptions in service. Moreover, MARTA allows her to accept all card types in one solution, replacing the two physical terminals she previously kept just to ensure broad payments acceptance.

Today, with MARTA on her phone, Olesya can participate in seasonal fairs and pop-up events with no setup burden, further expanding her reach beyond her one shop. This improved mobility, convenience, and card acceptance flexibility convinced her to recommend MARTA to fellow artisans.

Azamat Ataxanov, a skilled woodworker, creates handmade décor and furniture items to sell at local craft fairs and his shop near tourist attractions in Tashkent. He began to accept card payments with POS terminals in 2023 offered by his bank. However, delays of one to two days for settling transactions created some challenges in managing material purchases and workshop expenses.

Like Olesya, Azamat also opted to switch to the MARTA Soft POS in 2025. Interested by the idea of using his phone to accept payments, he visited the MARTA website and completed the entire onboarding process online—no bank visits, no paperwork. He was able to download the app, verify his identity remotely, and start accepting all major cards instantly. The simplicity and speed of the process stood out to him.

Once he began using the new app, Azamat appreciated its faster settlement of transactions directly to his bank card. Without delays of one to two days, he was able to manage his material purchases and expenses more effectively. He also appreciated that the app combined all card acceptance into a single interface, eliminating the need to use different terminals or apps depending on the customer’s card.

Olesya and Azamat are just two of the 14,000 micro and small enterprises in Uzbekistan who have adopted the new version of MARTA Soft POS since its launch in November 2024.  It’s an app for small businesses and self-employed individuals in Uzbekistan to accept card payments from all card types on their smartphones with a simple, digital onboarding experience, and faster settlement of payments to their bank cards. This innovation is specifically designed for individual entrepreneurs who lack access to more conventional banking services and formalization.

Key lessons learned

While still relatively new in Uzbekistan, we’ve learned some key lessons about the MARTA Soft POS that we’re applying to make the solution even more useful. Accion and MayaSoft have been working together to tailor it to small businesses and encourage more of them to embrace digital tools.  Along the way, we have had to make adjustments to the marketing strategy and onboarding process to improve performance and adoption rates. Here are some initial thoughts from these past ten months.

Higher touch + engaging storytelling = higher small business conversion rates

While digital marketing built strong awareness of the solution amongst small businesses, the most effective customer acquisition channels so far have been those that involved some direct human interaction — such as POS agents and bank referrals. In fact, more than 85 percent of merchants who tried MARTA Soft POS through these channels kept using it, demonstrating that merchant trust is best earned through personalized human guidance, especially in regions with lower digital literacy.

When we dug deeper into our digital marketing efforts, we learned that static banners and generic graphics (including animations) underperformed compared to short videos and real merchant testimonials. Instead, we found that digital marketing that included engaging storytelling, localized messaging, and real-use scenarios had a stronger influence on outreach and trial-to-adoption conversion for small businesses.

Going forward, our marketing will emphasize human-led outreach supported by video, equipping agents with the same content for demos and collaborating with bank partners to increase referrals from their staff working with small businesses.

Simplified onboarding processes led to greater adoption

When MARTA originally launched, it had a semi-manual onboarding process, where merchants had to wait for registration approval to be completed by the KYC (Know Your Customer) officer of MayaSoft. However, this process significantly limited adoption in the initial months. Once onboarding automation was introduced in January, there was an immediate increase in merchants who were trialing and adopting the solution. Friction at the point of registration was a key driver of drop-off. Merchants and self-employed individuals need simple, fast, and mobile-first onboarding experiences.

Fraud risk emerged early

We observed isolated cases of attempted fraudulent activity, where merchants tried to use MARTA to simulate sales and withdraw funds from credit cards, emerged immediately after launch. These cases were a form of misuse intended to bypass cash withdrawal limits. It is important to embed robust fraud controls early, even in small merchant ecosystems.

While such cases were not surprising, they accelerated our efforts to harden our anti-fraud system. We tightened the onboarding process for applicants who were new to MayaSoft (enhanced KYC and early-life limits), added device-binding and geofencing signals, and applied short settlement holds on suspicious spikes in transactions. Taken together, these lessons are already shaping how MARTA evolves: we’re doubling down on human-led, video-first acquisition with POS agents and bank co-referrals; keeping onboarding radically simple through mobile-first eKYC and instant activation; and hardening fraud defenses with early-life limits, device binding/geofencing, and real-time monitoring. Next, we’ll expand distribution with bank partners, localize merchant education content, and continue optimizing settlement and in-app support, tracking progress by trial-to-adoption and retention. Our objective is clear: make card acceptance effortless and trustworthy for Uzbekistan’s micro and small businesses, and then extend that blueprint to more merchants and channels to improve digital and financial inclusion.