My payment adventure in Kyrgyzstan

I love to share personal stories of the troubles I get into in different places around the world. Especially when it comes to payments, my professional field.

This is a story of the payment product UX gone wrong because of one teeny tiny detail, and the black market it created.

It became mandatory for anyone who buys a local sim card, a local or a foreigner, to register their phone IMEI number in case their device was purchased outside Kyrgyzstan. This is a similar requirement that there is in Turkey, Indonesia, India, and many other countries.

You are supposed to do this on the website by yourself. The mobile operator salespeople warned me that instead, I should go to Tsum (the shopping mall) right after the purchase to get help.

The timeframe for registration, however, differs dramatically from any other country. While 30 calendar days are declared on the website, AND confirmed by the mobile operator salesperson, in my personal experience this was 3 hours. 3 hours after purchase, my mobile network was blocked.

Alright. Annoyed, I immediately went to the suggested place ‘to register my phone’, only to find out that there was no governmental service desk or office. It is simply a marketplace with phone and laptop vendors who are selling the ‘unlocking’ services for cash. Why is this happening if there is a public website?

The IMEI registration process is a paid service. You are to pay around 7 dollars for it online on the governmental website. The issue is the payment method choice. The only way to pay for it is via the mobile phone balance from one of the three top operators in the country. No card payment or QR payment is available.

If you ever paid via mobile phone balance online (or direct carrier billing), you know you have to enter SMS the confirm the transaction. The one you cannot receive if your mobile network is blocked.

I had to find someone with the local phone number to help me pay. This is why I was sent to those vendors in the first place.

I did manage to get help from the locals. It was not easy at all, the process was to withdraw cash from my bank card, give it to a local, ask a local to top up their balance, try a few times, and cry a few times over the inexplicable errors. We had to experiment, we had to fight through the website’s UX. But finally, I managed to get the payment done, thanks to the kind local people who were painstakingly helpful.

All in all, a payment is not supposed to be a fight-through thing. If only they allowed me to pay simply by the bank card or QR. I wonder if they overlooked this problem, or if it was created to help boost cultural relationships.