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....
