ALMATY, Kazakhstan — September 18, 2026 — Kazakhstan’s fintech market is entering a new phase in which large banks dominate mass-market consumers while independent startups increasingly look toward business-to-business services, financial infrastructure and specialized technology products for growth.
The shift is documented in the third annual national study, “Fintech in Kazakhstan 2026,” prepared by RISE Research & Advisory in partnership with Tarlan Payments, BCC Hub and Fintech Center, with the support of the National Bank of the Republic of Kazakhstan.
The study was presented in Almaty at the Central Asia Fintech Summit.
The report describes a market built around large banking ecosystems. The five largest banks account for 69% of Kazakhstan’s total banking-sector assets. Their mobile applications increasingly combine payments, lending, e-commerce, travel, transportation, government services and other consumer functions.
Banks are also expanding into services for small businesses. According to the study, banks already offer solutions addressing 16 of the 19 key needs of small businesses, including company registration, account opening, payments, lending, employee payroll and accounting.
That concentration is changing the addressable market for independent fintech companies.
Startup investment has fallen from its 2023 peak
Kazakhstan’s fintech startup sector attracted around $72 million in venture capital between 2021 and 2025, according to the study.
Investment reached $32 million in 2023, before declining to $19 million in 2024 and $8 million in 2025.
The study says most transactions remain concentrated at early stages, while investment activity is increasingly focused on B2B and infrastructure solutions rather than companies competing directly with banks for mass-market consumers.
The funding pattern comes as Kazakhstan’s banking sector continues to deepen its digital distribution.
The National Bank reported that in the first half of 2026, the number of cashless transactions by the population increased 5.1% to 7.1 billion, while their value rose 4.2% to 92.1 trillion tenge. The central bank also reported that Kazakhstanis were making more than 39 million cashless transactions a day, worth about 509 billion tenge.
In 2025, more than 1 billion payment-card transactions were processed in Kazakhstan, while 8 out of 10 transactions were conducted through internet and mobile banking, including QR payments. The National Bank said turnover through payment-organization services increased 16.2% during the year.
Cashless payments are becoming the foundation of the market
The supplied 2026 fintech study estimates that the share of cashless transactions reached 88% in 2026, compared with 67% in 2019.
QR payments have expanded particularly quickly. Their share of the number of cashless transactions increased from 14% in 2023 to 28% in 2025.
Between January and May 2026, QR payment turnover reached approximately $17 billion, exceeding POS-terminal transaction turnover for the second consecutive year, according to the study.
Kazakhstan also moved to a unified interbank infrastructure for retail QR payments and phone-number transfers on July 19, 2026, when the systems became operational across all retail banks, according to the study.
The National Bank had already reported that the country’s national payment systems processed more than 1.5 quadrillion tenge in 2025, representing about 90% of total cashless turnover. It also said that the national Anti-Fraud Center had registered more than 100,000 fraud incidents and blocked approximately 3 billion tenge.
The development of common infrastructure changes the economics of payments. Banks and fintech companies increasingly compete over the products and services built around payments rather than simply the ability to process a transaction.
BaaS creates a new route for fintech companies
Banking-as-a-Service is becoming another channel through which independent technology companies can reach financial customers without building an entire regulated banking operation.
The study says that at least four banks now provide external companies with access to licensed banking infrastructure, processing and related services.
The model allows fintech companies and non-financial platforms to integrate financial products through partner banks.
“Access to banking infrastructure is now available from several banks,” Ruslan Yensebayev, CEO of BCC Hub, said in the study. He described BaaS as an operating model involving onboarding, KYB, complaint handling, service levels and allocation of responsibilities between the bank and the company controlling the customer interface.
Digital assets move into the regulated financial system
Kazakhstan has also expanded its regulatory framework for digital assets.
According to the study, Kazakhstan has operated since May 2026 under a national regulatory framework for digital assets that complements the regime established by the Astana International Financial Centre.
In 2025, AIFC-licensed digital-asset service providers processed $10.6 billion in transactions and served approximately 215,000 clients, according to the study.
The market is also expanding beyond cryptocurrency trading. Kazakhstan has launched or is testing a tenge-denominated stablecoin, tokenization of gold and commercial real estate, and payments using digital assets.
The study’s authors identify real-world-asset tokenization and its integration into conventional financial transactions as potential areas for further development.
Dias Savetkhanov, CEO of Fintech Center, said the competitive focus was shifting toward infrastructure, including Open Banking, BaaS and digital assets.
AI is moving deeper into banking
Artificial intelligence is another area where Kazakhstan’s banks are expanding their technology capabilities.
According to the study, around 75% of banks in Kazakhstan already use AI for functions including credit assessment, fraud detection and marketing.
The next development identified by the study is the combination of AI with BaaS and external fintech services, allowing companies to integrate specialized technology into their own products.
Ainur Zhanturina, CEO of RISE Research & Advisory, said smaller technology companies could use this model to address specific customer problems rather than competing with banks on scale.
Kazakhstan’s fintech market is large, digital and increasingly concentrated
The broader financial data supports the picture of a highly digitized market.
As of July 2026, banks and Kazpost processed 1.35 billion payment-instrument transactions worth 83.89 trillion tenge during the month, according to National Bank statistics. Payment cards accounted for 97.37% of transaction volume, while cashless card payments represented 98.56% of all card transactions.
Electronic money is also expanding. As of July 1, 2026, 8 banks and Kazpost issued electronic money, while payment organizations operated 34 of 38 electronic-money systems. In the second quarter of 2026, Kazakh issuers issued 409.8 billion tenge of electronic money, and the number of open electronic wallets exceeded 38 million. Transactions using electronic money issued by Kazakh issuers reached 63.5 million transactions worth 684.3 billion tenge, with transaction value up 113.1% from the second quarter of 2025.
The scale of digital payments gives banks an established customer base and extensive transaction data, making it difficult for a new fintech company to replicate the distribution advantages of a large financial institution.
The IMF has also identified concentration as a feature of Kazakhstan’s digital-payments landscape. In a 2026 technical-assistance report on the digital tenge, the IMF said Kaspi and Halyk were the dominant payment providers among Kazakhstan’s commercial banks, operating proprietary closed-loop ecosystems. The IMF also warned that concentration of payment services in one or two closed systems can create cyber and operational risks because those networks can become critical points of failure.
Main challenges facing Kazakhstan’s fintech market
The growth of digital finance does not eliminate structural problems. Several challenges identified by regulators and international financial institutions remain relevant to the sector.
Market concentration
Large banking ecosystems control substantial customer distribution and financial infrastructure. The IMF has identified concentration in digital payments as a potential systemic risk, particularly where large proprietary networks become important channels for everyday transactions.
For startups, concentration also creates a commercial challenge: a company attempting to acquire consumers directly may have to compete with banks that already control payment accounts, lending products, mobile applications and established customer relationships.
Cybersecurity and fraud
The expansion of digital payments increases the importance of cybersecurity and fraud prevention.
The National Bank said its Anti-Fraud Center had registered more than 100,000 fraudulent incidents in 2025 and blocked approximately 3 billion tenge.
The IMF has separately warned that concentration of payments in large closed-loop systems could increase the consequences of a successful cyberattack or operational outage.
Household credit and leverage
Rapid digital access to financial products also creates credit-risk considerations.
The IMF’s 2026 Article IV assessment said Kazakhstan’s banks were well capitalized, profitable and liquid, while consumer-credit growth had begun to slow but remained high. Consumer credit growth reached 25% year over year in October 2025, according to the IMF, which said this contributed to strong domestic demand and raised concerns about household leverage.
The issue is relevant to fintech because digital distribution can make credit products easier to access and scale.
Regulation and compliance costs
The new regulatory framework is opening parts of banking infrastructure to technology companies while simultaneously increasing requirements around risk management, cybersecurity and data protection.
For startups, this creates a dual effect: regulated infrastructure can become easier to access, but compliance requirements can raise the cost and complexity of entering financial services.
The National Bank said the country’s national digital financial infrastructure was substantially formed during 2025, including national payment systems, biometric identification, the National Anti-Fraud Center and the digital-tenge platform.
Funding constraints
The decline in fintech venture investment documented by the 2026 study — from $32 million in 2023 to $19 million in 2024 and $8 million in 2025 — represents another constraint for startups.
The concentration of investment in early-stage and B2B or infrastructure companies suggests that access to capital is increasingly tied to business models that complement existing financial infrastructure rather than directly challenge established consumer banking platforms.
S&P Ratings show a banking sector with improving credit profiles
S&P Global Ratings’ assessment provides another measure of Kazakhstan’s financial-sector position.
On August 21, 2026, S&P raised Kazakhstan’s sovereign long-term foreign- and local-currency credit ratings from BBB- to BBB and the short-term ratings from A-3 to A-2, with a stable outlook. S&P also revised its country-risk assessment from 5 to 4.
In its July 2026 Banking Industry Country Risk Assessment update, S&P classified Kazakhstan’s banking-industry country-risk trend as “Supportive.”
S&P’s publicly available ratings also show the position of individual banks within the country’s credit system. On September 4, 2026, S&P raised Bank CenterCredit’s long-term issuer credit rating from BB to BB+, affirmed its short-term rating at B, and raised its Kazakhstan national-scale rating from kzAA- to kzAA+. The outlook remained Positive.
S&P’s global banking research also lists Halyk Bank JSC with a BBB- long-term issuer credit rating in its top-200 rated banks dataset, with a bBB- stand-alone credit profile, adequate capital and earnings and adequate risk position. The data in that table are based on information as of December 2024 and should not be treated as a September 2026 rating action.
These ratings do not measure fintech competitiveness directly. They provide a credit-market view of the banking institutions that increasingly underpin Kazakhstan’s digital financial ecosystem.
A different growth model for fintech startups
Kazakhstan’s fintech market is therefore moving from a period centered on consumer acquisition toward one increasingly shaped by infrastructure, interoperability and specialized services.
Banks have captured much of the mass consumer market through applications that combine payments, credit and non-financial services. At the same time, the expansion of Open Banking, BaaS, common payment infrastructure, digital assets and AI is creating additional channels for technology companies to participate in financial services.
The data supplied in the “Fintech in Kazakhstan 2026” study show the scale of the transition: 69% of banking-sector assets are held by the five largest banks, fintech startups attracted around $72 million in venture capital between 2021 and 2025, and cashless payments reached 88% of transactions in 2026.
For independent fintech companies, the market is increasingly structured around a question of where they sit in the financial stack — as direct consumer platforms, or as technology providers operating through the banking infrastructure that already serves most of the country’s digital-finance users.