Kazakhstan to Introduce Social Wallet and New Payment System

According to Erbolat Dosaev, head of the National Bank, the so-called social wallet will appear in Kazakhstan in 2022.  

As the official noted, the regulator has already supported the Agreement on the Coordination of the Macroeconomic Policy Measures for 2021-2023 between the National Bank, Agency for Regulation and Development of Financial Market, and Ministry of Economy.  

The National Bank’s role is to facilitate financial stability and Kazakhstan’s finance sector development. As President Tokayev has announced, the new social wallet and national payment system will start to work in 2022. 

The idea of a social wallet, which might be used for social payments, was developed by the Ministry of Labor last year. Currently, when people apply for payments from the state they have to open a card account. Now the ministry wants to simplify that procedure by introducing a new system. To protect users, system developers have suggested to use that money directly through National Bank, avoiding various banks’ systems that might be different from each other.

Dosayev has also confirmed that the regulator will continue to develop the national payment system. It will work through the system of instant payments and an interbank system of charge cards. 

«This move will allow us to reduce transaction costs for businesses and people; ease access to the financial services as well as make the financial market more competitive,» he said.

National Bank is aimed to decrease costs of online payments two times and make them as fast as possible, no longer than one minute. The national payment system should be created by 2025. In the first stage, a system of instant payments and an interbank system of charge cards must be developed this year. In the period from 2022 to 2023, some new services will be added to the system.