In a country with over 130 ethnicities, it’d be fair to imagine there is a big variety in preferred payment methods. However, in Kazakhstan, a country full of intrigue and contrast, you’d be wrong, as one QR payment method is the banker for the vast majority of the population.
Having recently spent over three weeks on a project in the country, in addition to a few months remotely, I have made a collection of observations on a market that very few in the West are giving much attention to. Attention that both Kazakhstan and its Central Asian neighbours rightfully deserve.
The horse in front
Just like the vast natural grassland of the Kazakh Steppe, which lies in contrast to the modern cities of Astana and Almaty, so is the traditional banking landscape (dominated by three large banking groups) contrasted by a fast-moving digital leader – Kaspi.kz (Kaspi).
Kaspi, listed on NASDAQ with a market cap of more than $16billion as of early July, has earned itself a Harvard Business School case study for the journey it took from a struggling lender to a full-scale super app that today serves 75 per cent of the Kazakh population. When looking at the emergence of super apps in Southeast Asia, the majority start as non-banks that eventually find a way into the financial services space. However, this was not the case for Kaspi. Going against the grain, its super app journey began in the financial sector, as a conventional bank.
Throughout the 2000s, European banks were consolidating and experimenting cautiously with mobile banking, but for Kaspi, this pace was too slow. Undergoing a radical transformation towards the end of the decade, and following a run on the bank episode in 2014, Kaspi realised that an opportunity and a challenge had presented itself in Kazakhstan: the fragmented digital infrastructure, especially outside of Almaty and Astana, was becoming glaringly obvious. Consumers needed more than a bank; they needed a trusted digital gateway to daily life.
Kaspi began by focusing on mobile payments and instalment-based consumer loans, targeting a population that was increasingly smartphone-savvy but still underbanked. From there, it expanded aggressively into e-commerce, bill payments, transport, and government services. With over 12 million monthly active users in 2025, Kaspi is much more than a bank – it is an operating system for everyday life, akin to China’s WeChat or Indonesia’s GoTo.
Today, virtually every person and merchant, including even the smallest bazaars, use and accept digital payments via the Kaspi QR code. Kaspi’s online shop had over 721,000 active sellers by mid‑2024, vastly outpacing competitors. According to Medium, it accounts for approximately 70 per cent of the country’s total online sales volume.
Banks are runners too
Kaspi’s success has seen consumers become accustomed to, and demand, great financial user experiences. So much so that other banks have been spurred into action, realising that they need to create a strong and competitive user experience in their banking apps or risk falling at the next hurdle.
Banks aren’t solely responding to Kaspi by creating a better banking app. Many are going beyond this and looking to invest heavily in an ecosystem business model to create a network of businesses. Much like the nomadic tribes forming seasonal alliances, banks and telcos are forging flexible, mutually reinforcing ecosystems. For example, Freedom Bank and Vodafone launched Freedom Mobile, Jusan Bank partnered with Kcell, and Forte Bank partnered with Beeline mobile.
Taking a slightly different approach, Bank CenterCredit partnered with China’s Ant Group Digital Technologies to develop its own marketplace of financial and non-financial products tailored to its existing client base.
Despite Kaspi’s overwhelming success, it doesn’t have a horse in the banking-as-a-service race, and this has not gone unnoticed by banks. Though more market education is needed, the conditions are ripe, and there is a huge opportunity for banks.
Although Kaspi has a strong position managing the daily lives of Kazakh consumers, when it comes to managing vertically integrated user journeys – e-commerce selling, taxi driving, house purchase, etc. – the field is open for the banks to race into, most likely with embedded finance.
The SME opportunity
Similarly, Kaspi’s influence does not extend into Kazakhstan’s SME sector, meaning there is fertile ground for broader fintech innovation. SMEs here account for around 30 per cent of GDP, and yet many still lack access to efficient credit, working capital, and digital tools.
Fintech startups — both local and regional — are stepping in to close the gap. From microloans and digital bookkeeping to supply chain finance and embedded payment solutions, there’s a growing ecosystem aiming to modernise how SMEs operate.
Unlike Western Europe, where open banking and financial APIs are the norm, Kazakhstan’s fintechs often work around limited access to formal financial data by leveraging alternative indicators like utility payment history, mobile usage patterns, and even Kaspi transaction flows.
Consumers are already accustomed to a daily operating system in Kaspi. Meanwhile, SME owners do not have a comparable service. Embedded finance can change this. It is poised to create opportunities for banks, payments companies and business services providers to create efficient and convenient tools for the business owners the Wall Street Journal called ‘The Stealthy Wealthy’.
The policy environment
The Central Bank of Kazakhstan (NBK) has identified fintech as a key strategic objective and has taken steps to improve the underlying financial infrastructure of the country, as well as the access to it.
Kazakhstan is pushing forward a major rollout of digital payment reforms, including a foray into the open banking sector. Called the ‘open API technology sandbox’, the NBK has created a collaborative platform which will allow market participants to test and refine their fintech solutions using open APIs.
It will still be a while before everyone can benefit from the sandbox, though. While full-scale API deployment remains ongoing for the major banks, second-tier institutions still must wait a couple of years before they can get involved.
Looking ahead
Kazakhstan is no longer a fintech backwater. It’s a laboratory for integrated, mobile-first finance, shaped by necessity, scale, and strategic intent. It is a must-visit for a fintech traveller like myself who can’t help but witness buzzing ecosystems first-hand.. From a pure travel perspective, everything is very convenient in the major cities, thanks to Kaspi. The country rapidly moved from an 85 per cent cash-based to an 85 per cent cashless economy, and I look forward to venturing out to some of the country’s natural gems on my next trip.
But beyond convenience lies opportunity. Whether it’s serving the underbanked SMEs, building vertical-specific financial tools, or enabling embedded finance at the industry level, Kazakhstan is fertile ground for fintech entrepreneurship. The reins are loose, and the ride has only just begun.
