Kazakhstan Is Going to Launch National Payment System Next Year

The National Bank of Kazakhstan is going to launch the National Payment System (NPS) in the middle of next year, according to the Interfax Kazakhstan news agency citing Berik Sholpankulov, deputy head of the regulator.

As the official noted, the National Bank and the financial market actors have been working on the formation of NPS.

«The core elements of that system are the interbanking system of payment cards and the system of instant payments. We made a test launch of both of them in November. The full-scale launch is expected in the middle of 2022,» Sholpankulov told the parliament on Monday.

Also, he reported that the system of instant payment has already included four financial companies, with another seven banks expected to join anytime soon.

«Once the system of instant payment is working, the size of banking fees will drop 2.5-fold to 1% of each transaction,» he said.

Moreover, the launch of the interbanking system of payment cards is expected to guarantee that all card transactions inside the country are conducted based on the national infrastructure.

In January 2020, Erbolat Dosaev, head of the National Bank of Kazakhstan said that the bank and the Agency for Regulation and Development of the Financial Market are going to develop a program of the national payment system development to fight against the shadow economy and to raise the share of electronic transactions by October 1, 2020. He said that this system is going to be mutually beneficial for all stakeholders.

As of November 1, 2021, there are 22 commercial banks in Kazakhstan that have issued 57.7 million payment cards, according to the National Bank.