As of January 1, Kazakhstan had 54.6 million cards from international payment systems in circulation, which increased to 56.7 million by February 1. The growth over the month amounted to 2.1 million, or 3.9%. According to calculations by the Russian publication RBC, such a high growth rate has not been seen since April 2023, when the number of cards increased by 4%.
A similar figure was noted in June 2022, with a growth rate of 3.6%, when many Russians traveled to Kazakhstan to open bank accounts. On average, in 2024, the number of cards in circulation grew by 0.8% monthly.
In Kazakhstan, 17 banks and "Kazpost" are responsible for issuing payment cards. These organizations issue and distribute payment cards from international systems such as VISA International, MasterCard Worldwide, UnionPay International, American Express International, as well as local payment cards from the Kaspi.kz system.
Of the total number of cards, 40.8 million are Visa cards, while MasterCard accounts for 14.5 million. The volume of local payment system cards increased by 108,000 in January, reaching a total of 26.8 million.
In January, the transaction volume using payment cards amounted to 14.9 trillion tenge, with a total of 1 billion transactions. Cardholders conducted 17.6 million cash withdrawal operations, totaling 1.9 trillion tenge.
In mid-January, the Agency for Regulation and Development of the Financial Market announced that it had adopted a resolution limiting the validity of payment cards for non-residents to 12 months. This change does not apply to existing payment cards. Exceptions are made for entrepreneurs, diplomats, investors, and foreigners with residence permits. The new rules went into effect on January 20.
Starting January 21, several Kazakh banks announced a temporary suspension of card issuance for foreigners due to the need to reconfigure their systems.