Gig Economy in Kazakhstan: How Companies Can Legally and Transparently Manage Freelance Contractors Through Prosper Pay

In this article, Baeub ZhanTurin, CEO of Prosper Pay, explains how companies can legally and transparently manage flexible employment by integrating payments, taxes, and documentation into a single automated system.

Baeub ZhanTurin, city — Almaty, CEO of Prosper Pay

The labor market is changing rapidly. The share of flexible employment and the gig format is growing in logistics, retail, delivery, services, and manufacturing. At the same time, requirements for proper documentation, tax transparency, and paperwork are intensifying. Managing flexible contractors manually becomes labor-intensive and creates compliance risks when dealing with a large number of counterparties.

The global trend is clear: the gig economy has entered a phase of maturity. Globally, platform-based employment is shifting from a stage of rapid growth to one of regulation and standardization. Requirements for transparency of contractor status, algorithmic management, and the protection of digital rights are strengthening. Competition is shifting toward Compliance 2.0 — the winner is not the one who simply pays faster, but the one who can prove the correctness of processes: who is connected, under what conditions, how remuneration is calculated, and on what basis payments are made.

Financial flexibility, including Earned Wage Access, is gradually becoming part of payroll infrastructure and is increasingly viewed within the framework of formal regulation.

In Kazakhstan, the segment is already systemic. According to Urban Forum Kazakhstan, more than 500,000 people — about 5-6% of the employed population — earn income through platforms. The largest segments are taxi and courier delivery.

At the same time, e-commerce is growing: according to PwC estimates, in the first half of 2025, the online retail market reached 1.7 trillion tenge, and its share in total retail was 17.1%. This directly increases the demand for attracting independent contractors.

At the same time, market formalization is intensifying, and platforms are being integrated into the official digital circuit. The gig economy in Kazakhstan is no longer an experiment — it is a significant segment of the economy.

And under these conditions, systemic digital solutions are becoming not a competitive advantage, but necessary growth infrastructure.

Gig-economy: why this is critical for business

The gig economy is no longer an “additional force,” but an operational model for tasks with variable workload volumes and project-based nature.

Businesses need flexibility:
— to quickly attract contractors for specific task volumes and seasonal workload peaks
— to manage project geography
— to work with independent counterparties in strict compliance with the legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Gig contractors allow payment for specific results or completed volumes, rather than fixed time presence, which is especially important for logistics, delivery, project work, and seasonal tasks.

But with flexibility comes the cost of errors. When there are many contractors, any failure becomes systemic. Therefore, the gig economy is a matter of business sustainability, not just a hiring format.

What problems do companies face

Most often — with three systemic blocks:

1. Documentation and paperwork: fragmented statuses, lack of a unified standard, losses in paperwork/approvals, difficulties with signing.
2. Payments and trust: delays, misunderstanding of calculations, lack of a transparent history — this reduces service quality and employee retention.
3. Control and quality: when there is no digital circuit, it is difficult to answer simple questions: “who is active today?”, “who is authorized?”, “what was accrued?”, “what was signed?”, “where are the risks?”.
4. Tax compliance and accounting: manual calculation of taxes and formation of closing documents for thousands of contractors is a significant risk, especially in new legislative realities where this segment is under heightened attention of regulatory authorities.

For example, for a company with 500 self-employed individuals, manual processing of each under a civil law contract (GPC), manual calculation of payments and taxes becomes a serious operational challenge limiting business growth. Prosper Pay automates exactly this process, bringing chaos in working with freelance contractors to full transparency and compliance with the requirements of the State Revenue Committee (SRC) and the Ministry of Labor.

In the gig environment, retention is not just “motivation,” it is predictability and fairness. When a contractor clearly understands what and when they are paid, sees the accrual history, and receives payments consistently, one of the key causes of instability in contractor work — financial uncertainty and constant stress — is reduced.

For business, this is primarily convenient regarding closing documents and taxes: fewer errors, disputed situations, formation of a pool of reliable contractors, growth in service quality, and discipline.

Prosper Pay as an ecosystem and strategic partner

Prosper Pay is an ecosystem for working with contractors, external counterparties, and employees in a single mobile application. The platform creates a unified digital circuit where documentation, paperwork, and payments are combined into a transparent, controlled process. One of the key focuses is companies working with a large pool of contractors and counterparties involved simultaneously in hundreds or thousands of operations. Prosper Pay automates tax calculations, formation of AVRs (Advance Payment Reports), ESFs (Electronic Invoices), and other documents, ensuring full compliance with the requirements of the SRC and the Ministry of Labor.

Important: Prosper Pay is intended for companies whose business model inherently involves attracting independent contractors. We ensure maximum transparency and compliance where the Gig economy is already the basis of processes.

Special tax regime for platform employment in Kazakhstan

Since 2026, Kazakhstan has implemented a special tax regime for platform employment — a legal model for working with individuals through digital platforms with a fixed tax burden of 4% of the contractor’s income. In this model, Prosper Pay takes on administration: calculating and paying taxes, forming receipts and documents, as well as supporting payments.

Today, it is no longer enough for businesses to simply automate individual tasks. A system is needed that manages the entire process — from onboarding contractors to final payment and tax calculation. This is exactly the model that Prosper Pay provides.

Transitioning to a platform model allows combining all processes into a single digital circuit. This ensures complete transparency of operations: from the moment a contractor is onboarded to confirmation of service provision and payment. This approach minimizes risks associated with human error and allows scaling the business without a multiple increase in operational load.

Speed through process

When processes are standardized, onboarding new contractors ceases to be a separate project every time. Businesses can:
— quickly deploy people to shifts and projects
— quickly cover seasonal peaks
— not lose momentum due to approvals, manual checks, and “bottlenecks.”

Reducing errors and the “cost of corrections”

The most expensive errors are those discovered later: recalculation, redoing documents, disputed payments, conflicts with contractors, internal audits.

An end-to-end digital process reduces such risks because:
— data is entered once
— documents are automatically generated according to rules
— statuses and checks are built into the system.

Easy scaling 

One of the key effects is the ability to grow without losing manageability. A unified circuit allows increasing work volumes while maintaining discipline in document flow, payment deadlines, and process control without a multiple increase in the load on HR and accounting.

People’s trust — as an operational KPI

With a large number of independent contractors, trust is not an abstraction, but a working performance indicator.

When contractors have:
— clear rules of engagement
— transparent accruals
— timely payments
— confirmed documents
This forms loyalty to the platform, reduces the number of conflicts and manual reviews, and increases service quality.

Where Prosper Pay is already working

Today, Prosper Pay is used by companies in retail, delivery, logistics, and service industries — everywhere where a large number of people are involved and operational tempo is high.

In the last year, the platform has scaled significantly: through the Prosper Pay infrastructure, more than 100,000 contractors legally earn income, and over 100 B2B companies have entrusted us with automating payments and tax compliance.

In practice, this looks simple: a company onboards contractors, signs documents, manages accruals and payments, tracks statuses — and all of this in one system, without manual “assembly” from different services.

We position Prosper Pay as infrastructure for managing flexible employment and a strategic business partner. This is a “white” digital environment where all payments and processes are built in full compliance with the law.

We are forming a standard where flexible employment is not a compromise between speed and transparency, but a fully manageable model.

Conclusions

In 2026, an official model for businesses to work with independent contractors through digital platforms appeared in Kazakhstan. This is a separate tax regime for platform employment with clear rules and a fixed burden.

This model complements existing options for interacting with individuals, offering a transparent and legal mechanism for specific platform employment tasks. Businesses receive a legal tool for working with a fixed tax rate of 4% for 40 types of activities through a digital platform.

Companies for whom transparency, manageability, and the ability to scale without increasing risks are important are gradually building exactly such a work system.

Flexible employment in Central Asia is going through a stage of rapid institutionalization. In the coming years, the market expects inevitable consolidation of HR-tech and FinTech. Ecosystems providing a seamless path — from predictive contractor scoring to legal instant access to earned funds — will become the standard.

Prosper Pay is already forming this architectural foundation today, providing large businesses with ready-made infrastructure for scaling in the new type of economy.

The mission of Prosper Pay is to make working with Gig contractors as transparent and understandable as calculating a standard salary, but hundreds of times faster. We give businesses a legal foundation for growth in the new economy, where every tenge is paid legally, and documents are generated in one click.

Connecting to Prosper Pay takes no more than 10 minutes. Learn more at prosperpay.kz.