Timur Suleimenov told how Kazakhstan will build one of the best financial systems in the world

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Today, the Central Asia Fintech Summit 2026 is taking place in Almaty. Chairman of the National Bank Timur Suleimenov, at the opening of the summit, told how the regulator is changing the financial system of Kazakhstan, why the market needs a Unified QR, digital tenge, crypto-assets and AI, and why now the main work will have to be done by financial institutions themselves. The main plenary session was moderated by the founder of Digital Business, Vitaly Volyanuk.

Digital Business is the general media partner of Central Asia Fintech Summit 2026.

Suleimenov believes that Kazakhstan already has a strong base for further digital transformation. According to him, the financial sector should become one of the leaders in the country’s overall transition to a fully digital state:

“Therefore, we at the National Bank, together with the ARRDF, made a clear, understandable decision about what we want to achieve. We want to build the best digital financial ecosystem in the region and one of the best in the world. I may be ambitious, but nevertheless this is the task to which we certainly strive - and to which we direct our efforts and resources.”

It's not just about new banking apps. The National Bank wants to create a system that will at the same time be safe, convenient for citizens and businesses, and will allow the launch of new financial products.

Suleimenov considers one of the main advantages of Kazakhstan to be the already formed habit of the population to use digital payments.

“We certainly have a strong foundation for this. I have already said that 90% of our payments are made by bank transfer. A whole generation of young Kazakhstanis probably doesn’t even know what cash is - and what it was like when there was no Apple Pay, when there was no QR, when, in the end, there weren’t even just cards. This is a great achievement that we take for granted, but nevertheless, in many countries of the world, reaching 50 - 60% of non-cash turnover is still a challenge. We already have this, and this is, in my opinion, a great success,” notes Suleimenov.

Suleimenov specifically focused on changing the approach of regulators. According to him, the National Bank and the ARRDF deliberately abandoned the wait-and-see attitude, when new technologies are first assessed for a long time, and decisions are made after the market itself has implemented them.

“As you know, in many countries regulators are conservative. They take a wait-and-see attitude - “I’ll see, maybe I’ll give this opportunity, or maybe I won’t.” We decided to change the approach as a whole: from someone who is pulled along with us, to turn into someone who pushes the market. That is, to push the market and thus move all this work forward,” shared the country’s chief banker.

This approach has already led to the creation of a national digital financial infrastructure. It includes, in particular, biometrics, interbank payments, digital tenge and an anti-fraud system. One of the most recent examples is Unified QR:

“This year we launched an interbank mobile payment system. The so-called unified QR went live on July 19 - already