Total cashless payments in Kazakhstan grew rapidly in the first half of the year

Kazakhstan’s total cashless payments in the first half of 2019 amounted to 4.8 trillion tenge ($12.5 billion), double from a year earlier, the Kazakh website Kapital.kz reported on August 19. The number of cashless transactions in kazakhstan jumped to 460m from 193m a year earlier.

Data show that Kazakhstan completed 523.8 million non-cash payment transactions in 2018, a 1.3-fold increase over 2017; the total volume of transactions reached 6.4 trillion tenge ($16.9 billion), up 1.1 times year-on-year.

In terms of regional distribution, in the first half of 2019, the three regions with the largest cashless payments in Kazakhstan were Almaty city (3.3 trillion tenge, accounting for 68.9%), Nursultan city (408.2 billion tenge, accounting for 9.2%) and Almaty state (218.4 billion tenge, accounting for 4.6%). Cashless payments in the three regions accounted for 82.1 per cent of the total amount of cashless transactions in Kazakhstan.

In terms of payment methods, the most common form of cashless payments in Kazakhstan is online and mobile phone payments (3 trillion tenge, or 63.8 per cent), up 180 per cent from a year earlier. This was followed by POS machine payments (1.6 trillion tenge, or 34.4 per cent), and ATM machine payments (89.1 billion tenge) in third place.



According to the website of Kazakhstan’s prime minister’s office, the ministry of trade and integration of Kazakhstan has adopted the “roadmap for Kazakhstan’s e-commerce development in 2019-2025”, which aims to develop domestic e-commerce and promote the export of Kazakh goods through e-commerce. By implementing the Road Map, it is expected to increase the share of e-commerce in Retail Trade in Kazakhstan from 1.4% in 2018 to 5% by 2025.

Currently, 28 commercial Banks and Kazakhstan post have the right to issue payment CARDS. Kazakhstan has national bank payment system – bank transfer system (М С П Д) and interbank clearing system (С М К), can provide payment and settlement services. There are also settlement services provided by private payment systems.